Turn on cable news, and you will hear that voter identification remains one of the most divisive issues in American politics. But the American people apparently did not get the memo. On this question, the country is not divided. Only the pundit class is still confused.
A recent Rainey Center survey found that 66% of likely voters support requiring government-issued photo identification to vote, including 47% who strongly support it. Just 21% oppose. In a country that cannot agree on what to have for dinner without a political debate breaking out, those numbers amount to a landslide.
Look closer and the story gets even more interesting.
Yes, 86% of Republicans strongly support voter ID requirements. But 68% of Democrats support them too, with 39% strongly in favor. The partisan divide here is one of intensity, not direction. Opposition to voter ID is concentrated among Democratic pundits, not Democratic voters. When two-thirds of one party and nearly nine in 10 of the other land in the same place, that is not a wedge issue. That is a consensus waiting for leaders willing to act.
And act they should, because the same survey reveals a confidence problem no democracy can afford to ignore.
Only 19% of Americans are very confident that the 2026 midterm elections will be conducted fairly and counted accurately. Add to that those who are somewhat confident, and you barely clear half. Roughly one in three voters lacks confidence in the fairness of the next election. Asked to name the biggest threat to free and fair elections, 23% pointed to ineligible people voting, while 21% pointed to eligible voters being denied the ability to vote. Those two concerns come from different political directions, but they share a single solution: verification done right.
Despite rampant reductionist thinking on social media and cable news, verification is not a single policy. It can be accomplished in several legitimate ways, and Americans support nearly all of them. In-person voting may rely on government-issued identification. Vote-by-mail states verify identity through established signature verification processes and other secure methods tied to voter registration records. The principle is the same: every eligible voter should be able to cast a ballot, and election officials should have reliable ways to confirm that voter is who they claim to be.
Sixty-two percent support requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. Sixty-seven percent favor using Social Security records and state death certificates to remove deceased voters from the rolls. A majority supports states cooperating on a nationwide database to identify duplicate registrations when voters move. None of this is exotic. We verify identity to board a plane, fill a prescription, access financial services, and complete countless other important transactions, including now buying food in New York City. Voters plainly believe their ballot deserves the same thoughtful level of verification.
Here is the part the professional alarmists get exactly backwards, the goal of verification is more voting, not less. We need more average Americans casting ballots, not fewer. Participation and integrity are partners, not rivals. People who trust the process show up. People who suspect the game is rigged stay home, and every unanswered doubt about election integrity is a voter suppression program all its own.
The survey confirms voters understand this balance. Asked to choose priorities, 54% said the government should make sure everyone who registers is actually eligible, while 32% prioritized making voting as easy as possible. But that framing offers a false choice. The right reform package does both. Build strong identity verification into every method of voting, whether through government-issued identification for in-person voting or robust signature verification and other secure authentication methods for mail ballots. Pair those safeguards with free identification cards where needed, generous accessibility provisions, modernized voter registration, and clean, accurate voter rolls. Add paper ballots, which 79% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats support, so every result can be audited and verified. That is a bipartisan election integrity package hiding in plain sight.
North Carolina offers a preview of what that package looks like once it stops being a talking point and becomes law. This November, voters will decide whether to write the state’s mail-in identification requirement into the state constitution itself. The rule is not complicated. An absentee voter attaches a photocopy of a photo ID to the ballot. A voter who cannot manage a photocopy may instead write a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. That is the entire burden, a task most Americans complete without thinking twice when they set up a bank account.
The policy has already been running in North Carolina, already been tested in the state’s highest court, and already survived contact with reality. What remains is a constitutional question, not a practical one: Should a safeguard this modest be left standing on ordinary statute, subject to the next legislature’s whim, or fixed in place the way the voters plainly want it? North Carolina will answer that question in a few months. Every state legislature watching should take notes.
State legislators of both parties should grab it. The votes are there, the public demand is there, and the payoff is a rarity in modern politics: a reform that strengthens confidence in the system among Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. The voter ID debate is settled where it matters most, in the minds of the American people. All that remains is for elected officials, and pundits, to catch up with the voters.
