The Wisconsin Referendum Showed Again That Voter I.D. Laws Are Immensely Popular. Why Are They So Controversial?
An anti-partisan voter identification compromise
ACLU of Wisconsin
The first off-year elections after a presidential campaign are typically the focus of extraordinary attention. Observers read into the results intensely to gauge whether Americans generally support the performance of the new Chief Executive or if they are already growing discontent.
But, more than that, these elections receive outsized emphasis because the diehards on each side—especially the losing side—have a lot of partisan energy left over, and there are no other contests on the electoral calendar. So, these provincial races get invaded by armies of out-of-state campaign workers and volunteers, as well as being flooded with funding from special interests and donors across the country. Naturally, much of this money gets spent on advertising, so people living in these areas get blitzed with campaign commercials, leaving many of them thinking, “I thought we just done got done with all this stuff!”
In the Trump era, exaggerating the significance of lower-level special elections has reached new heights. In February 2017, the entire political world became consumed by a state senate race in Delaware, where I had just moved (so I had a first-hand view of what seemed to be the most important state legislative election in the history of the world, based on the attention it received). The state’s newly elected Democratic Lieutenant Governor Bethany Hall-Long had held the contested seat but was forced to vacate it to assume her new office, meaning that a special election had to be held to determine her successor.
The election saw Democrat Stephanie Hansen defeat Republican John Marino with over 58% of the vote, ensuring that Democrats would retain control of the chamber. But, in the overheated media narrative, the election became an early referendum on Trump.
It didn’t matter that Democrats had held the senate in the Blue Hen State since 1980 (or had controlled the state’s House of Representatives since 2008) or that it is one of the truest-and-bluest states in the nation overall, a one-party enclave that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee or a Republican candidate for governor since 1988 and hasn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1994 or the U.S. House of Representatives since 2008.
All that mattered was that it was an outlet into which partisan zealots could channel their rage and that it gave the political press something to fulminate about. It was the only game in town, and, as a result, spending in the campaign shattered records for a senate election in the state.
Now, it’s 2025, and a new Trump administration has just taken office, and, once again, early-days special elections are being read as a Trump referendum. This time, it was last Tuesday’s Wisconsin state Supreme Court election, in which the liberal Susan Crawford beat the conservative Brad Schimel by 10 points in a state that Trump had won by less than a point, as well as a pair of Florida congressional elections the same day, in which Republicans Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis defeated Democrats Josh Weil and Gay Valimont by about 15 points each.
The Florida wins also added two seats to Republicans’ miniscule advantage in the House of Representatives. However, the result was still viewed as a warning sign for the party, since, in November, the GOP’s spread in both congressional districts was more than double its margin last week.
And there may be something to this analysis. Trump certainly has been busy in his first couple months, and Americans certainly have opinions about what he’s been doing. So, maybe voters in Florida and Wisconsin were sending a message to the president that the way he’s governing is not what they voted for.
Alternately, the results may just be a function of an energized Democratic base that is still smarting from its loss in November, which translated to Weil and Valimont having a fundraising advantage of nine-to-one, along with the expenditure of more than $100 million in the Wisconsin campaign. That’s a question for Republicans to sort out.
But, there was another item on the ballot in Wisconsin, a referendum on adding a photo I.D. requirement for voters to the state constitution, which passed with 63% of the vote, a 26-point margin. Interestingly, Wisconsinites’ resounding endorsement of the amendment came even as they had decisively backed justice-elect Crawford, who had publicly opposed it.
Even this result may understate the scale of support for mandatory voter photo I.D. Polls by Monmouth University in 2021 and the American Bar Association in 2022 have shown that about 80% of Americans back the provision.
Yet, from an anti-partisan perspective, even policy debates that feature an uber-majority of support on one side aren’t settled simply by the presence of massive consensus. Because uber-minorities still consist of stakeholders whose concerns still deserve consideration, notwithstanding their meager support.
An anti-partisan compromise
To analyze the voter I.D. question, let’s examine premises that pertain to the issue that neither side’s partisans are completely willing to face. These would include the already-cited stat that four-out-of-five Americans back a photo I.D. requirement for voting; that photo I.D.s are the most secure, non-intrusive method of verifying people’s identities; that some individuals who want to vote may have reasons for not wanting to show I.D. and therefore might be dissuaded from voting; that connecting race to people’s incentive not to show I.D. (as most arguments against voter I.D. laws do) carries some terribly racist assumptions; that photo I.D.s are all but universally available; that steps could be taken to make photo I.D. even easier to obtain; that the realities of some people’s lives make it harder for them to obtain I.D. or less likely to seek to obtain it; that some people in this category may have more pressing needs than having voting made more convenient; that elections are a government service, and many government services mandate the showing of photo I.D.; that many private services also mandate presentation of photo I.D.; that all European countries make voters show photo I.D.; that voter I.D. laws in some of those countries are less burdensome than the voter I.D. laws in some U.S. states.
After reviewing this list, three things become apparent. First, photo I.D. requirements are needed to establish voter identity and thus protect the democratic value of one person-one vote. Second, photo I.D. cards should be made even more universally available to American citizens. Third, it should be illegal for voters’ I.D. to be used to identify them for any other purpose.
There. The above, single paragraph has sketched out an outline for a policy solution that would resolve the voter I.D. controversy.
People who support photo I.D. requirements should certainly be pleased by the outcome because those requirements would become universal. But, if that was the end of the matter, then the issue wouldn’t be fully resolved. It would constitute a total victory for one side and a total defeat for the other, which is the very style of politics that anti-partisanism seeks to eliminate.
Thus, we must find a way to address the concerns of opponents of voter I.D. provisions that will lead to a win-win outcome. Hence the proposals to make it as simple as possible to get photo I.D. and to make it illegal to use voters’ I.D. to identify them for any other reason.
These reforms would effectively change the culture of voter I.D. laws. Because a case can be argued that, in current circumstances, photo I.D. requirements actually are divisive. They create a divide between those who can easily obtain photo I.D. and those who face more impediments. And they create another division between people who have no reluctance to produce a photo I.D. and those who do.
But, if we made photo I.D.s more universally available and took away any potential risk in displaying one, those divisions would be removed. Voter I.D. laws would become a unifying element. Every voter would have easy access to photo I.D. And all voters would produce it because they would realize that doing so is essential, not just to protect against fraud, but to safeguard the principle of one person-one vote.
These proposals also call the bluff of anyone from either side who would approach the issue in bad faith. Because if your stated reasons for opposing voter I.D. laws are inequalities in voters’ access to photo I.D. and voters’ fear of consequence for showing I.D, and then you object to a proposal that features a photo I.D. mandate but also directly addresses your concerns, then you don’t really want to find a solution. What you want is surrender on this issue and, beyond that, what you want is an issue, one that fires up your base and leads to wins in this fight and many more.
On the other hand, if you back voter I.D. requirements, but you don’t support a compromise policy that mandates photo I.D. but also makes it easier to get I.D. and eliminates any reason to fear showing I.D., then you don’t want resolution either. You actually do want to suppress votes.
Portions of this post have been adapted from my book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down. Buy the book here. For the time being, it is only available digitally. To read, download the Kindle app to your phone, your iPad or tablet, your Kindle device or your computer.
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