While California voters are sharply divided along partisan lines when it comes to election integrity and voter fraud, they broadly support a politically-charged proposal from President Trump and other Republicans to require first-time voters to provide government-issued identification proving their citizenship in order to register, according to a new poll.
A majority of voters in both parties back the proof of citizenship requirement for registering, according to a new poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times. Most Californians also supported requiring a government ID every time a voter casts a ballot, though by a slimmer majority and despite most Democrats opposing the idea.
Mark DiCamillo, co-director of the Berkeley IGS Poll, said the bipartisan support for first-time voters showing proof of citizenship stood out, as many of the poll’s other findings showed a stark political divide and a majority of Californians at odds with Trump and his recent edicts on voting — which California and other states are suing to block.
Still, DiCamillo said his biggest takeaway was the sharp distrust in the state’s election system that the poll found among California Republicans, which he said should be a “serious concern” for state elections officials — even if a majority trust the system. Democratic voters in the state are largely confident in the state election system and doubtful of prevalent voter fraud, while many Republican voters feel the opposite, the poll found.
…The poll found Californians are largely at odds with Trump’s attacks on the integrityof U.S. elections, which is perhaps not surprising in a state where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans nearly 2 to 1.
For instance, the poll found that a majority of Californians — and strong majorities of Democrats — believe voter fraud is rare, express confidence in the integrity of the state’s voting system, oppose efforts by the federal government to take more control over voting from the state and counties, and oppose Trump’s proposal to prohibit the counting of mail ballots after election day.
Among the respondents who participated in the poll — 6,201 registered voters in the state — more than two-thirds, or 68%, expressed confidence in the overall integrity of the state’s election system. The same percentage opposed Trump’s recent proposal to prohibit the counting of ballots postmarked but not received by election day.
Well over half — or 57% — said they believed voter fraud in the state is very or fairly rare, while a similar percentage, 58%, said they were opposed to Trump’s proposal for the federal government to take greater control over state elections.
On all of those questions, however, Californians were heavily divided along partisan lines.
For instance, 61% of Republican voters said they are not very or not at all confident in the integrity of the state’s election system, which compared to just 13% of Democrats. And while 74% of Republicans said fraud was somewhat or very prevalent in state elections, just 14% of Democrats felt the same, the poll found.
A majority of voters — 58% — opposed the federal government taking more control over elections from the state, despite more than three-quarters of Republicans supporting the move.
And, while 57% of Republican voters backed Trump’s proposal to prohibit the counting of mail ballots postmarked but not received by election officials by election day, just 9% of Democrats agreed — with 86% of Democrats disagreeing.
Rick Hasen, a voting rights expert at UCLA Law School, said the poll results — including Californians’ overall confidence in the state’s election system, disbelief in prevalent fraud and opposition to federal takeover — were in line with other polling and what he’d expect.
“Most people in most states believe that their own state’s election system is run well, and that if there is any kind of problem, it’s elsewhere,” he said.
It was equally unsurprising that “Republicans have a much more cynical view of the process,” he said.
“Party supporters tend to follow their elites, and the top of the Republican Party has been making false and unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud for decades now,” Hasen said. “It’s no surprise that it’s seeped through to the electorate.”
Hasen said the results on proof of citizenship also made sense, as “voter ID has polled positively, so requiring proof of voter citizenship also tends to poll positively.” But, he questioned whether poll respondents really understood the implications of such a requirement.
Asked whether it would be easy or difficult to “present a government-issued photo ID as proof of citizenship when voting in an election,” 93% of respondents said it would be easy. But Hasen, many Democrats and most voting rights groups have argued just the opposite — that millions of U.S. citizens would be blocked from voting by the measure because they lack the required documents, which don’t include birth certificates, which don’t have photos, or many California driver’s licenses.
“I just don’t think people recognize that a lot of government-issued photo IDs would not qualify, and they certainly wouldn’t qualify under the president’s proposed rules,” Hasen said.