Changes to Voter ID Requirements

September 8th, 2025
Rebecca Gehlmann

Since falsely claiming that his 2020 presidential election loss was a result of widespread voter fraud—even after this claim has been rigorously fact-checked—President Trump has been on a mission to restructure the election system itself.

Cracking Down on Voter ID Laws

The President posted to Truth Social earlier this week that he will soon be issuing an executive order requiring identifications for every voter. What these identifications will entail is still uncertain. Today, the requirements vary between the 36 states that require identification, with possibilities including a current photo ID, a current utility bill, a bank statement, a government check, a paycheck or any government-issued document showing one’s name and address. Currently, 23 of those 36 states let only citizens with photo identification to vote; the remaining 13 use any combination of the aforementioned documents.

If this executive order passes, then it could impact millions of American voters. Studies have found that nearly 29 million voting-age U.S. citizens lacked a valid driver's license, a common form of voting ID, and nearly 7 million of these citizens had no alternative form of photo identification. These numbers were disproportionately higher among young voters, voters from historically marginalized racial categories, and voters with lower levels of educational attainment.

However, it is unlikely that such an order will actually be implemented. This spring, the President attempted to pass an executive order that would require voters to show proof of citizenship. The order was struck down twice: first by a judge in Washington D.C. and secondly by a federal judge in Maryland. The problem that this order attempted to mitigate, non-citizen voting, is incredibly rare. Not only is non-citizen voting already illegal, but also occurs at a rate of around 0.00001%.

Finally, an executive order meddling in election policy is likely unconstitutional. States have the primary authority to regulate elections, and Congress is allowed to enact election laws and regulations.

Attacking Mail-In Voting

In the same Truth Social post, Trump professed his intention to ban mail-in voting, “Except For Those That Are Very Ill, And The Far Away Military.” If implemented, such an executive order would impact even more Americans. During the 2024 election, 30.3% of ballots were mail-in. Trump has often spread baseless claims about corruption in mail-in voting, claiming that “some people get five, six, seven ballots delivered to them.” This claim has been disproven: each ballot has a unique barcode that makes it identifiable and non-duplicatable.

Trump’s policy passing remains implausible: not only would it breach the Constitution, but it would also be unpopular. A majority of Americans back mail-in voting.

President Trump is also aiming to ban the counting of mail-in ballots following election day. Such ballots have been completed and postmarked before election day, but are processed and counted after. The Supreme Court will be ruling on this case. A Republican Congressman has brought it to them by challenging an Illinois state law that mandates post-election day ballot counting. The Court will likely not deliver a conclusive ruling.

Doing Without Voting Machines

The final proposed change is to remove vote-counting machines, which the President believes are expensive and highly inaccurate. The Department of Justice has already begun investigating voting machines in the state of Missouri over the 2020 election results. These accusations continue, despite evidence that the machines are faster, cheaper and more accurate than employing humans to count the votes.

In preparation for this planned executive order, the state of Texas has already begun replacing some of its voting machines.

Impacts

While each of these proposed reforms could reshape the American election system, they are mostly unlikely to ever come into fruition. It appears the President is simply trying to showcase his power and test the limits of Constitutionality.

Extemp Analysis by: Rebecca Gehlmann

Question: What impact would Donald Trump’s voting reforms have on future elections?*

AGD: As usual, there are two ways to go about this. The first is a humorous AGD. Make a joke about how how Trump believes dead people voted in the 2020 election (maybe throw in something about how Trump is convinced he’s climbing the totem pole to get to heaven). Or maybe something about how Trump wants to do away with machines which count votes, however would struggle with actually tabulating him themself because that would require him to read. The opportunities are endless. The other option is a narrative, find someone who chose to use mail in voting because they were a single parent, or the elderly, and struggled to get to the polling station but still wanted to be a part of democracy.

Background: Clean three sentences. 1) Donald Trump believed that the 2020 election was stolen and has accused dead people of voting/mail in voting fraud/machine inconsistencies. 2) Now, he’s introducing broad reforms which would require more verification/make it harder to vote. 3) the population is worried about the impacts of these reforms if they were passed on future elections.

SOS: This should be an SOS on democracy. Emphasize that Trump’s reforms make voting difficult, which prevents citizens’ participation and enables a dictatorial regime.

Answer: Make participation in elections significantly more difficult/decrease voter turnout

Analysis + Concluding Thoughts

Substructure:

Status quo (positive thing thats currently happening quick enable people to vote)
Change in status quo (how Trump’s reforms will take this away/prevent voting)

Eliminating mail-in voting (make this a point about how the elderly/those who have demanding jobs use mail-in voting to participate in democracy, and now will no longer be able to vote easily)

Reclassifying identification standards (I actually think this could be a super interesting point about how often marginalized communities like Native Americans don’t have traditional identification and rely on tribal papers to vote, but now won’t be able to. Or, you could generalize about the American population and how many voters don’t have drivers licenses)

Decreasing polling center capacity (this is a point about how polling centers use machines to count voters/make them effective, but by forcing humans to do this, centers will be stretched thin, and many will close. This means the distance to get to a center will increase, so less people will travel)

*my analysis is on this question, but other viable questions are: Will Trump’s voting reforms pass? What impact would Trump’s voting reforms have on the midterms? What impact would Trump’s voting reforms have on American democracy? What impact would Trump’s voting reforms have on American voter turnout?