Some Ohio Republicans want to enshrine photo voter ID in the state constitution, but a hearing last week raised doubts about the effort.

Requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls is popular in opinion polls, and it’s been the law in Ohio since 2023. The new proposal would go before voters this November, and enshrine the requirement in the Ohio Constitution with a permanence well beyond the current statute.

That doesn’t appear to please many besides Ohio House Joint Resolution 9’s sponsors. Of the 80-plus witnesses who submitted testimony, just two support the idea. Neither of them showed up to testify in person last week.

Voting rights groups question the push for an amendment when the proposal makes no changes at all to current law and only makes future changes harder. Meanwhile, advocates who support increasingly more restrictive voting policies reject the idea because it doesn’t go far enough.

Voting rights opposition

Several speakers offered a version of the point made by Richard Topper, a retired lawyer and poll worker — the problem isn’t photo voter ID, it’s rushing to put it in the constitution.

ACLU of Ohio Legislative Director Gary Daniels explained the group’s opposition “is much less about the underlying policy issue of photo IDs for voters and much more about taking away valuable policy and legislative time to quickly place an unneeded constitutional amendment on the ballot for purely political reasons.”

State Rep. Adam Mathews, R-Lebanon, pushed back. He pointed to the ACLU’s support for an Equal Rights Amendment despite similar protections showing up in several federal statutes. Why shouldn’t state lawmakers take steps to insulate Ohio’s current voting laws?

“I think the difference between those examples and this example,” Daniels said, “is that when we (support amendments), we are doing it, hoping to make things better. We don’t see H.J.R. 9 as making things better.”

Although the proposed amendment codifies photo voter ID, it isn’t a carbon copy of Ohio’s statutory language. Several voting rights advocates raised concerns about what the resolution leaves out and what it adds in.

When lawmakers approved photo voter ID in 2023, they included a provision allowing anyone to receive a free state-issued ID card. One reason for that is the prohibition on poll taxes in the U.S. Constitution’s 24th Amendment. But that free ID provision doesn’t appear in the proposed amendment.

“You can easily argue that it is unconstitutional at the federal level to not have free ID,” League of Women Voters Executive Director Jen Miller said, “that if you require something that costs money, that that is a poll tax.”

Miller opposes H.J.R. 9, but told lawmakers if they choose to go forward, they should at least include the free ID provision in the amendment’s text.

Opponents also worry about what lawmakers are adding through the resolution. The measure’s final section asserts that nothing in the resolution requires lawmakers to allow voting “in any location or manner other than in person at a polling place on the day of an election.”

To Steve David from All Voting is Local Action Ohio, that section hints at lawmakers’ long-term intent.

“Rather than installing protections for Ohio voters,” he said, “the General Assembly is telegraphing its intentions to restrict early in-person voting and eliminate the no-fault absentee system.”

‘Unequal treatment’

Advocates who typically welcome more stringent voting policies in the name of greater “integrity” batted down the proposal as well. Marcell Strbich, a retired Air Force officer who regularly testifies on electoral legislation and ran unsuccessfully for Ohio Secretary of State in last month’s Republican primary, said the amendment would lock in “unequal treatment.”

“The problem with the resolution,” he said, “is not the goal of requiring voter ID — as has been discussed today, that’s widely understood and unanimously agreed upon — but the unfair and incomplete way that it achieves it.”

Strbich sees a glaring hole in Ohio’s photo voter ID requirements: absentee voters. While a voter arriving in person at the polls has to present an unexpired government-issued ID, absentee voters simply write down their information on the ballot envelope.

“Most Ohioans support universal photo ID,” Strbich said, “yet many voters will not realize they’re being asked to enshrine this clause of unequal treatment, photo ID for in-person voters only, with no requirement for mail-in absentee ballots.”

To Strbich and others in his corner, that amounts to a “fatal flaw” or a “constitutional loophole.” They say lawmakers should require absentee voters include a photocopy of their license or ID card with their ballot. A measure to that effect, Ohio House Bill 577, is currently under consideration by the same committee working on H.J.R. 9. Strbich worries passage of the amendment might close the door on ID requirements for absentee voters.

Eric Watson, who ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for the 88th Ohio House district, described himself as a supporter of the resolution — so long as lawmakers “close these loopholes.”

“You need to show a government photo ID for many other things,” Watson said, “so it only makes sense that a government photo ID would also be required for mail-in ballots to help protect one of the greatest privileges we have as a citizen.”

Ohio state Rep. Tom Young, R-Washington Twp., expressed doubts about security.

“Before you leave today,” he told Watson, “Give me your driver’s license. I’ll keep it for a while and return it to you, maybe, and store all the data. Is that a good idea?”

Meanwhile, committee chair Ohio House Rep. Sharon Ray, R-Wadsworth, pressed him on the logic of requiring absentee voters to send a photocopied ID.

“What are you going to compare the copy to?” she asked. “Do you see how nonsensical that is?”

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This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.