This report presents results from the first public survey in nearly 20 years focused on who does and does not have various types of government-issued photo identification.This report also sheds new light on the barriers faced by voting-age citizens in obtaining such identification. Lastly, it explores the public’s knowledge of voter ID laws in their states for in-person and mail-in voting against a backdrop of states rapidly adding new or stricter voter ID requirements between 2021 and 2023.
VoteRiders, Public Wise, the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement (CDCE) at the University of Maryland, and the Brennan Center for Justice contracted with SSRS, a highly regarded survey firm, to obtain a nationally representative sample of the U.S. adult citizen population. The sample of 2,386 respondents was drawn from SSRS’s probability panel and a random sample of known pre-paid cellular phone numbers….
A summary of the main results follows.
Nearly 21 million voting-age U.S. citizens do not have a current (non-expired) driver’s license. Just under 9%, or 20.76 million people, who are U.S. citizens aged 18 or older do not have a non-expired driver’s license. Another 12% (28.6 million) have a nonexpired license, but it does not have both their current address and current name. For these individuals, a mismatched address is the largest issue. Ninety-six percent of those with some discrepancy have a license that does not have their current address,
1.5% have their current address but not their current name, and just over 2% do not have their current address or current name on their license. Additionally, just over 1% of adult U.S. citizens do not have any form of government-issued photo identification, which amounts to nearly 2.6 million people.
Millions of Americans across political parties do not have a license. Twenty-three percent of Democrats (23 million people), 16% of Republicans (15.7 million people), and 31% of independents/others (10.5 million people) indicate they do not have a license with their current name and/or address. Nearly 15 million people indicate they do not have a license at all, including 9% of Democrats (8.6 million people), 6% of Republicans (6.2 million people), and 18% of independents/others (5.9 million people).Black Americans and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately less likely to have a current driver’s license. Over a quarter of Black adult citizens and Hispanic adult citizens do not have a driver’s license with their current name and/or address (28% and 27% respectively), compared to about one out of five adult citizens who identify as Asian/Pacific Islander (21%) or White (18%). Eighteen percent of Black adult citizens, 15% of Hispanic adult citizens, and 13% of Asian/Pacific Islander adult citizens do not have a license at all, compared to just 5% of White adult citizens….