Ohio Senate supports voter photo ID amendment

The Ohio Senate voted Wednesday to advance a constitutional amendment to voters requiring photo ID to vote. Senators introduced the resolution just two weeks ago. A companion proposal in the House receives similar fast-track treatment.

If at least 60% of Ohio House members sign on to the proposal, voters will consider it in November.

Speaking after the vote, Senate President Rob McColley predicted straightforward passage if it can get to a vote.

“It will be very well supported by voters,” McColley said, “and I expect it will pass overwhelmingly because that is the type of protection voters want to see in the system.

While photo ID is incredibly popular, making last-minute changes can be a bit of a headache for some. Critics say Republicans are supporting the amendment to raise turnout in an unfavorable election cycle. Republican Party leaders deny this.

The proposal was met with piercing criticism from various sides of the electoral politics debate.

Voting rights advocates note that the proposal merely repeats state law. Nothing about the current voting process would change if the amendment were adopted. However, the amendment would make future changes more challenging, and by omitting the statutory provision guaranteeing a free ID card, the proposal could trigger legal challenges in the form of a poll tax.

Meanwhile, Ohioans pushing for greater voting restrictions oppose the amendment because it doesn’t go far enough. They are calling for legislation requiring absentee voters to attach a photocopy of their ID with their ballot and fear the amendment could thwart that effort.

They urged lawmakers to amend a resolution extending photo ID requirements to absentee ballots. Lawmakers have largely opposed the idea – what good is a photo ID if the voter isn’t standing in front of you?

In committee and on the Senate floor, Democrats introduced a number of their own amendments. Why not expand the list of acceptable documents or explicitly allow legislators to update the list? Could the amendment leave room for future electronic forms of identity proof? How about including a provision to ensure that Ohioans receive a free ID card? Perhaps most importantly, if state law requires valid government-issued ID, why not allow same-day voter registration?

The GOP-majority committee presented each of them in turn.

Debate on the dance floor

Supporters of the resolution defended their proposal as a way to ensure the “long-term security of our elections” and ensure that “in Ohio elections, government-issued photo ID will be the default.” Ohio State Sen. Jane Timken, D-Canton, described Virginia as a “cautionary tale.”

“After several years of operation and surviving court challenges, Virginia repealed photo ID requirements in 2020 after changing one General Assembly seat,” Timken said. “And this happened despite overwhelming voter support.”

Although Virginia allows voters to prove their identity with documents such as a utility bill or bank statement, most voters still show photo ID. A 2021 survey of several enormous towns by The Virginia Mercury found only approx.05% of voters vote without showing your ID.

Ohio Sen. Willis Blackshear, D-Dayton, criticized Republicans for rejecting Democrats’ amendments.

“The general response was, well, these provisions are already in the bill,” he said. “Well, photo ID is already regulated in statute. So the question is, if we believe that photo ID is important enough to be enshrined in the Constitution, why not include these protections?”

Ohio State Sen. Kent Smith, D-Euclid, said election security concerns behind the GOP push for increasingly stringent election policies are false. He said 22 million people have voted in the state since 2008, but there have been just 18 voter fraud charges during the same period.

“Fraudulent voting doesn’t happen very often in the state of Ohio,” he said. “Personal choice fraud is less common than UFO sightings or, more importantly, Bigfoot sightings in Portage County.”

Transition to the Senate and next steps

The resolution passed easily, 22 to 9, but Republican support was not universal.

Ohio Sen. Andrew Brenner, D-Delaware, said he would have preferred to include photo ID requirements for absentee voters, but decided to support the measure anyway. Brenner compared the resolution’s gradual progress to Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust.”

President McColley insisted that the amendment “leaves the door open” for future legislatures to make changes such as requiring photo ID for mail-in voting. But Ohio Sen. Al Cutrona, R-Canfield, couldn’t overcome his reservations.

“When you send your ballot by post, you should have some form of ID with you. Unfortunately, I don’t see it here and it raises my serious concerns,” he said. “I think it creates a loophole in our own constitution if it actually gets passed.”

Cutrona said he would urge House members to “strengthen” the provisions of the resolution.

The House committee considering a companion measure, House Joint Resolution 9, has not yet advanced this proposal. Some committee members, including the chair, Ohio Rep. Sharon Ray, R-Wadsworth, expressed skepticism about the photo ID requirement for absentee ballots.