Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution ┃Summary

Why Is This Claim True?

Welcome!

This section is the factual registry for Claim #01-004-001. Its focus is facts, not arguments: Every entry states one verifiable fact in a single sentence, cites the end source - the statute, court record, official report, database, or study where the fact terminates - and identifies the sub-claim it bears on.

Arguments and interpretations remain in Q1 | Meaning (Sections IX-X) and Q3 | Impact, cited to the parties who make them. No opinion piece is cited here as if it were a fact.

The three lanes - Evidence is numbered as follows:

▪ A-# | Affirming - facts a proponent would introduce to support this claim.

▪ D-# | Dissenting - facts an opponent would introduce to discredit this claim.

▪ N-# | Neutral - statutes, official counts, agency records, and facts both sides might introduce.

Evidence numbering

▪ Fact numbers are permanent and global. Once assigned, a six-digit number is never reused or reassigned, and the same fact carries the same number in every claim where it appears.

▪ The lane letter is not part of the number. It records where this claim places the fact. The same fact may sit in a different lane in a different claim - see the note below.

▪ The digits encode nothing. Not source type, not origin claim, not date. They are a plain sequence.

▪ Sources can be repeated - one source may support multiple entries in any lane.

▪ Every fact must include a link to the source; a fact that cannot be traced to a primary source does not enter the registry.

▪ Sub-claim tags use SC-1 through SC-7, matching Q1 | Meaning, Section II. Sub-claim tags are claim-relative: SC-1 here is unrelated to SC-1 in any other claim.

Sub-claim key

▪ SC-1 - Unverified identity causes real harm, likely undercounted.

▪ SC-2 - Current systems are insufficient and getting weaker.

▪ SC-3 - A universal standard would reduce the harm.

▪ SC-4 - All eligible people would be able to obtain and maintain one.

▪ SC-5 - It does not expand surveillance; uses are limited by statute.

▪ SC-6 - The cost and effort are justified.

▪ SC-7 - It can be implemented fairly and uniformly, and the process already exists in multiple states.

DISCLAIMER

Listing evidence in one of these three lanes does not mean we endorse it as true. We verify two things: The lane - Affirming, Dissenting, Neutral - and that each source states the fact we summarize.

Be aware that many “facts” presented by organizations and individuals have a bias. We have included all “facts” we believe are worthy of consideration, even those that end up dissenting with our proposed solution for the common good, or are neutral on it (could go either way).

Some reasons for the bias are studies rest on assumptions that can be biased; surveys are estimates, not full counts; and people on all sides of an issue do research with the intent to prove themselves right.

As we continue to expand our library of issues, some facts will be listed in multiple claims, and sometimes sit in different lanes - Affirming, Dissenting, or Neutral - because of how they relate to each claim.

Follow the links and judge the evidence for yourself. We provide our conclusions in the Q3 | Impact and Q4 | Solution sections of this claim.

Affirming Facts (A)

A-000013 | SC-2 - In February 2024, journalists documented an underground service, OnlyFake, selling realistic fake-ID images for $15 - advertised as neural-network generated at up to 20,000 documents per day - including a fabricated California driver’s license that passed the automated identity check of a major cryptocurrency exchange.

Source: 404 Media (Feb. 2024). Later forensic analysis questioned how much AI the service actually used; the cost, speed, and successful verification bypass are documented regardless.

Links:

▪ 404 Media: https://www.404media.co/inside-the-underground-site-where-ai-neural-networks-churns-out-fake-ids-onlyfake/

▪ Analysis of the AI claim: https://resistant.ai/blog/onlyfake-generative-ai-fraud

A-000014 | SC-2 - The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an alert in November 2024 reporting an increase in suspicious-activity filings describing deepfake media - including identity documents created or altered with generative AI - used to circumvent identity verification at financial institutions.

Source: FinCEN, Alert FIN-2024-Alert004 (Nov. 13, 2024).

Links:

▪ Official alert (PDF): https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/FinCEN-Alert-DeepFakes-Alert508FINAL.pdf

▪ Press release: https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-issues-alert-fraud-schemes-involving-deepfake-media-targeting-financial

A-000059 | SC-1, SC-2 - A software flaw in New Jersey’s motor-vehicle system registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024 - enrolling applicants even though they answered “no” to the citizenship question - and the error took a year to fix and was not disclosed until July 2026.

Source: Governor’s announcement (July 21, 2026); NBC News; New Jersey Monitor. Responsibility is contested and a federal investigation is open; figures may change.

Links:

▪ NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/6600-noncitizens-registered-vote-nj-software-error-governor-says-rcna588524

▪ New Jersey Monitor: https://newjerseymonitor.com/2026/07/21/governor-software-error-non-citizens-register-vote/

A-000060 | SC-1, SC-2 - Oregon’s motor-vehicle system mistakenly registered more than 1,600 people who had not provided proof of citizenship, an error traced to DMV staff mis-selecting document types and discovered only in 2024.

Source: Oregon Secretary of State newsroom (Sept. 2024); Associated Press (Sept. 30, 2024).

Links:

▪ Oregon Secretary of State: https://apps.oregon.gov/oregon-newsroom/OR/SOS/Posts/Post/dmv-potential-ineligible-voters-improper-registration-records

▪ AP report: https://wreg.com/news/your-voice-your-vote/ap-politics/ap-oregon-dmv-waited-weeks-to-tell-elections-officials-about-voter-registration-error/

A-000065 | SC-1 - The 9/11 Commission found that all but one of the nineteen hijackers acquired some form of U.S. identification document, some by fraud, and that these documents assisted them in boarding commercial flights, renting cars, and other necessary activities.

Source: The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (2004), pp. 384, 390; quoted in DHS written testimony to the House Judiciary Committee (Mar. 2012).

Links:

▪ DHS testimony quoting the report: https://www.dhs.gov/real-id/news/2012/03/21/written-testimony-plcy-house-committee-judiciary-subcommittee-crime-terrorism-and

▪ GAO summary of Commission recommendations: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-303692

A-000066 | SC-1, SC-2 - The 9/11 Commission recommended that the federal government set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification such as driver’s licenses, finding that at many entry points to vulnerable facilities, sources of identification are the last opportunity to confirm that people are who they say they are.

Source: The 9/11 Commission Report (2004), p. 390; recommendation catalogued by GAO and quoted in the Senate report on the 2009 PASS ID bill.

Links:

▪ GAO, Summary of Recommendations: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-303692

▪ S. Rept. 111-104 (quoting p. 390): https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/111th-congress/senate-report/104

A-000067 | SC-1 - The Federal Trade Commission received more than 1.1 million identity theft reports in 2024.

Source: Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024 (Mar. 10, 2025). The Data Book is based on unverified reports filed by consumers and is not a consumer survey. Note: The FTC publishes report counts for identity theft but does not publish a dollar-loss figure for it.

Links:

▪ Data Book 2024: https://www.ftc.gov/reports/consumer-sentinel-network-data-book-2024

▪ Interactive data: https://www.ftc.gov/exploredata

A-000068 | SC-1, SC-2 - The Federal Reserve identifies synthetic identity fraud - fictitious people built on a real Social Security number combined with fabricated details - as the fastest-growing type of identity theft in the United States, with the numbers most often taken from children, the elderly, the homeless, and the deceased because the theft goes undetected for years.

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, “A victimless crime? Hardly” (Aug. 2022), reporting Federal Reserve synthetic identity fraud research; losses estimated at $20 billion in 2020.

Links:

▪ Federal Reserve Bank of Boston: https://www.bostonfed.org/news-and-events/news/2022/08/synthetic-identity-fraud-is-not-a-victimless-crime-costs-billions-damages-lives.aspx

A-000069 | SC-2 - The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston reports that generative AI is being used to automate the creation of synthetic identities and to make them appear legitimate - including by fabricating supporting records such as synthetic parents - drawing on data from thousands of breaches compromising hundreds of millions of records.

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, “Gen AI is ramping up the threat of synthetic identity fraud” (Apr. 2025).

Links:

▪ Federal Reserve Bank of Boston: https://www.bostonfed.org/news-and-events/news/2025/04/synthetic-identity-fraud-financial-fraud-expanding-because-of-generative-artificial-intelligence.aspx

A-000070 | SC-3, SC-4, SC-7 - When REAL ID enforcement began at airport checkpoints on May 7, 2025, 81 percent of travelers already presented compliant identification; within two weeks the figure was 93 percent, and by December 2025 TSA reported more than 94 percent.

Source: Transportation Security Administration press releases (Apr. 11, May 21, and Dec. 1, 2025); Department of Homeland Security (May 7, 2025).

Links:

▪ TSA, enforcement begins (81%): https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/04/11/tsa-begins-real-id-full-enforcement-may-7

▪ TSA, two weeks in (93%): https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/05/21/tsa-reminds-public-real-id-enforcement-continues

▪ TSA, December 2025 (94%+): https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/12/01/tsa-introduces-new-45-fee-option-for-travelers-without-real-id

▪ DHS announcement: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/07/tsa-begins-real-id-full-enforcement

A-000071 | SC-5 - Federal law already restricts what may be done with the personal information a state motor-vehicle department collects: The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 prohibits release or use of that information except for fourteen enumerated permissible uses, sets penalties, and makes violators liable in a civil action to the individual whose information was released.

Source: 18 U.S.C. § 2721 et seq. (Driver’s Privacy Protection Act), Pub. L. 103-322 as amended; summarized by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Links:

▪ EPIC summary of the DPPA: https://epic.org/dppa/

A-000072 | SC-5 - The Supreme Court has enforced those statutory limits in both directions - upholding the DPPA against a state challenge in Reno v. Condon (2000), and in Maracich v. Spears (2013) holding that obtaining driver information to solicit clients falls outside the statute’s litigation exception.

Source: Reno v. Condon, 528 U.S. 141 (2000); Maracich v. Spears, 570 U.S. 48 (2013).

Links:

▪ Case summaries and DPPA background: https://epic.org/dppa/

A-000073 | SC-5 - Government capability to track individuals already operates at national scale and is independent of any identity credential: A public mapping project counts roughly 119,000 automated license plate reader cameras deployed across the United States.

Source: DeFlock mapping project, reported by Fox News (2026); Congressional Research Service background on ALPR systems.

Links:

▪ Reporting on the camera count: https://www.foxnews.com/tech/license-plate-cameras-tracking-drivers-everywhere

▪ CRS, ALPR background and legal issues: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF13068

▪ CRS, law enforcement use of ALPRs: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48160

A-000074 | SC-1 - U.S. consumers lost an estimated $27.3 billion to identity fraud in 2025, and the Identity Theft Resource Center logged a record 3,322 U.S. data compromises that year, with 80 percent of surveyed consumers reporting they had received at least one breach notice in the preceding twelve months.

Source: Javelin Strategy & Research (2026); Identity Theft Resource Center, 2025 Annual Data Breach Report. (Industry estimates, not official counts.)

Links:

▪ Reporting on both figures: https://www.foxnews.com/tech/last-years-breach-years-identity-fraud

A-000075 | SC-3, SC-7 - A national fingerprint-based identity system already exists and has operated for decades: The FBI’s Interstate Identification Index links the criminal history repositories of the FBI and participating states into a single national network, every record in it is supported by a fingerprint submission, and it has been in operation since 1983.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, IAFIS/NGI Biometric Interoperability documentation; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Comparison of Criminal-History Information Systems.

Links:

▪ FBI CJIS description of the III: https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/freedom-of-information-privacy-act/department-of-justice-fbi-privacy-impact-assessments/iafis-ngi-biometric-interoperability

▪ Bureau of Justice Statistics report (PDF): https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/253816.pdf

▪ FBI, Identity History Summary Checks: https://le.fbi.gov/informational-tools/identity-history-summary-checks

A-000076 | SC-1, SC-3 - A state law-enforcement agency states in its public guidance that it is common for criminal offenders to use false or alias names and dates of birth that a name-based records request will not detect, and that fingerprints are the only positive means of identification.

Source: Illinois State Police, “Guide to Understanding Criminal History Record Check Information,” published by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Links:

▪ Illinois guidance (PDF): https://dph.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idph/files/forms/background-check-guide-071817.pdf

A-000077 | SC-2 - U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Chicago’s international mail facility seized 19,888 counterfeit U.S. driver’s licenses in 1,513 shipments during the first six months of 2020, arriving mostly from China and Hong Kong and destined for addresses across the United States.

Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, local media release (July 2020).

Links:

▪ CBP release: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/over-19k-fraudulent-ids-seized-cbp-officers-chicago

A-000078 | SC-2 - The volume has continued: CBP officers in Louisville seized 7,789 counterfeit driver’s licenses across three shipments in a fourteen-day span in October 2022, and CBP in Chicago seized 4,345 counterfeit licenses in 485 shipments during a single month in 2025.

Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, local media releases (Oct. 2022; May 2025).

Links:

▪ CBP Louisville, October 2022: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/2-shipments-containing-4420-counterfeit-driver-s-licenses-seized-cbp

▪ CBP Chicago, 2025 (reported): https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/05/01/CBP-intercepts-counterfeit-watches-licenses/2421746120109/

A-000079 | SC-1, SC-2 - CBP reported two specific findings in the seized documents: Many counterfeit licenses shared the same photograph with different biographical data, and the barcode on counterfeit Michigan licenses functioned correctly when scanned.

Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, local media releases (2020).

Links:

▪ CBP Chicago release: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/over-19k-fraudulent-ids-seized-cbp-officers-chicago

▪ CBP Cincinnati release (same photograph, different names): https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cincinnati-cbp-officers-seize-over-2200-fraudulent-ids-year-0

A-000080 | SC-1, SC-2 - CBP states that counterfeit identification documents are used by foreign terrorist organizations, criminal organizations, and persons involved in fraud schemes to avoid attracting attention to illegal activity, and that such documents can support identity theft, human smuggling, and human trafficking.

Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection, statements of area port directors in agency media releases (2020; 2025).

Links:

▪ CBP Louisville: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-louisville-seizes-more-5000-fake-ids

▪ CBP Dallas-Fort Worth: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-intercepts-counterfeit-driver-s-licenses

A-000084 | SC-6 - Lacking a compliant credential already carries a direct price: Beginning February 1, 2026, TSA charges $45 to a traveler who arrives without an acceptable identification document and must use its identity-verification process instead.

Source: Transportation Security Administration press release (Dec. 1, 2025). Note: This fee exists because REAL ID enforcement exists, so it measures the cost of non-compliance with a standard this claim would extend, not a cost that would arise on its own.

Links:

▪ TSA announcement: https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/12/01/tsa-introduces-new-45-fee-option-for-travelers-without-real-id

A-000103 | SC-5 - A declassified report by the Director of National Intelligence found that the intelligence community purchases increasing volumes of commercially available information, including sensitive location data, and does not know how much it collects, what types, or what it does with the data.

Source: ODNI Senior Advisory Group, Report on Commercially Available Information (Jan. 2022, declassified June 2023). Released in response to oversight by Senator Ron Wyden and a FOIA request from the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Links:

▪ ODNI declassified report (PDF): https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Declassified-Report-on-CAI-January2022.pdf

▪ ODNI release announcement: https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/reports-publications-2023/3700-odni-senior-advisory-group-panel-declassified-report-on-commercially-available-information

▪ EPIC analysis of the findings: https://epic.org/odni-report-on-intelligence-agencies-data-purchases-underscores-urgency-of-reform/

A-000104 | SC-5 - The same ODNI report states that government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of their reading habits - yet smartphones, connected cars, web tracking technologies, and the Internet of Things produced that effect without government participation.

Source: ODNI Senior Advisory Group, Report on Commercially Available Information (Jan. 2022, declassified June 2023).

Links:

▪ ODNI declassified report (PDF): https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Declassified-Report-on-CAI-January2022.pdf

A-000105 | SC-5 - Federal agencies including the FBI, Secret Service, Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, and U.S. Special Operations Command have purchased aggregated smartphone location data from commercial brokers, and records obtained through FOIA litigation confirm that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection bought bulk access to cellphone location information harvested from smartphone applications.

Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Digital Dragnets: Examining the Government’s Access to Your Personal Data”; American Civil Liberties Union FOIA litigation against DHS (filed Dec. 2020). The purchases occur without the advance judicial review that would ordinarily attend government-compelled acquisition of comparable records.

Links:

▪ CSIS analysis: https://www.csis.org/analysis/digital-dragnets-examining-governments-access-your-personal-data

▪ Brennan Center on federal data purchases: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/federal-agencies-are-secretly-buying-consumer-data

A-000106 | SC-5 - Clearview AI has been awarded contracts with more than 3,000 U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies and claims to have scraped over 10 billion images, while the FBI’s own internal photo database holds roughly 640 million images.

Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Digital Dragnets” (2026).

Links:

▪ CSIS analysis: https://www.csis.org/analysis/digital-dragnets-examining-governments-access-your-personal-data

A-000107 | SC-5 - The Government Accountability Office found five federal agencies using facial recognition technology to monitor or surveil locations in order to determine whether a specific individual is present, including persons on watchlists.

Source: GAO, “Facial Recognition Technology: Current and Planned Uses by Federal Agencies,” GAO-21-526 (Aug. 2021).

Links:

▪ GAO report page: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-526

▪ Full report (PDF): https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-526.pdf

A-000108 | SC-5 - The FBI conducted more than 3.3 million queries of Americans’ communications against its Section 702 holdings between December 2020 and November 2021, up from approximately 1.3 million the previous year - warrantless searches under an authority nominally limited to targeting foreigners located outside the United States.

Source: ODNI Annual Statistical Transparency Report, cited in a joint oversight letter from the House Committee on the Judiciary and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to the FBI Director (May 24, 2022).

Links:

▪ House oversight letter (PDF): https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20220524_jdj_mt_to_wray_fisa_97.pdf

▪ CRS background on Section 702: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48592

A-000113 | SC-1, SC-2 - The federal government does not count the unlawfully present population; it estimates it by subtraction. The residual method estimates all foreign-born residents, subtracts an estimate of the lawfully present, and treats the remainder as unauthorized.

Source: Social Security Bulletin, “Measuring the Number of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States: A Review of the Residual Estimation Method,” Vol. 85 No. 2; Congressional Research Service, “Unauthorized Immigrants: Frequently Asked Questions” (R47218). Note: This is the methodological fact underneath every population figure in this registry. No system records these people, so every number is inferred.

Links:

§ Social Security Bulletin review: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v85n2/v85n2p1.html

§ CRS report: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47218

A-000116 | SC-2 - The official estimates diverge widely enough that Congress has formally asked DHS to explain the discrepancy - a May 2024 letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security noted that the DHS estimate differs drastically from other studies, one of which concluded the population might exceed 22 million, and requested an updated report.

Source: Congressional letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security (May 2, 2024). Note: The 22 million figure has been publicly critiqued, including by the Center for Immigration Studies. The fact entered here is the divergence and the congressional request, not the accuracy of any single estimate.

Links:

§ Congressional letter (PDF): https://roy.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/roy.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/Illegal%20Alien%20Population%20Update%20Letter_FINAL%20%282%29.pdf

A-000117 | SC-1 - The share of the unlawfully present population arriving by visa overstay rather than entry without inspection has risen in recent years, meaning a growing portion entered lawfully, were recorded at admission, and then disappeared from the record.

Source: Social Security Bulletin review of estimation methods. Connects to N-000100: 538,548 overstay events in Fiscal Year 2024 alone.

Links:

§ Social Security Bulletin review: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v85n2/v85n2p1.html

A-000119 | SC-2 - The nineteen states that issue credentials without proof of lawful status accept foreign source documents to establish identity - a foreign birth certificate, foreign passport, or consular identification card, with a tax identification number in most states, and a sworn affidavit in New Mexico where no tax number exists.

Source: National Conference of State Legislatures; state motor-vehicle requirements. No American authority can verify these records against the government that issued them. See A-000124 for a documented instance in which fraud in a foreign passport went undetected at the border.

Links:

§ NCSL summary: https://www.ncsl.org/immigration/states-offering-driver-s-licenses-to-immigrants

A-000124 | SC-2 - A September 11 hijacker was admitted to the United States on a passport later found to contain fraudulent travel stamps associated with al Qaeda. The inspector who admitted him did not detect the fraud, and the 9/11 Commission staff concluded he could not have been expected to, because the manipulation was not identified by the intelligence community until after the attacks.

Source: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, staff report “9/11 and Terrorist Travel,” Chapter 2.

Links:

§ 9/11 Commission staff report (PDF): https://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Ch2.pdf

§ Full monograph (PDF): https://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Monograph.pdf

A-000125 | SC-3, SC-7 - A study commissioned before India built its national identity system found that combining both iris images with all ten fingerprints produced accuracy more than an order of magnitude better than either method used alone. The study analyzed biometric matching for 40,000 people across three rural districts.

Source: Unique Identification Authority of India, “Role of Biometric Technology in Aadhaar Enrollment” (Jan. 2012), reporting the findings of the UIDAI enrollment proof-of-concept study.

Links:

§ UIDAI report (PDF): https://www.dematerialisedid.com/PDFs/role_of_biometric_technology_in_aadhaar_jan21_2012.pdf

A-000126 | SC-3, SC-7 - India’s national identity system confirms that each of more than 1.4 billion enrolled residents holds a single identity record by checking all ten fingerprints, both iris images, and a facial image against the entire database at every enrollment and update.

Source: Unique Identification Authority of India; reporting on the UIDAI biometric platform (Feb. 2026). Enrollment captures a photograph, ten fingerprints, and both iris scans, and each record is compared against every other record before a number is issued.

Links:

§ UIDAI platform reporting: https://idtechwire.com/indias-uidai-deploys-ai-powered-invisible-shield-for-aadhaar-biometric-deduplication/

§ Enrollment process description (PDF): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.04160

A-000127 | SC-7 - A state credential that confirms citizenship has been issued at scale: As of October 1, 2025, 2.26 million Washington license and identification card holders held an Enhanced Driver’s License or Enhanced ID, representing 33 percent of that state’s active cardholder population.

Source: Washington State Department of Licensing, Driver Licensing Office Workload Report, 2025 Quarter 3.

Links:

§ WA DOL quarterly report (PDF): https://dol.wa.gov/media/pdf/5020/licensing-office-quarterly-report-2025-q3pdf/download?inline=

A-000128 | SC-7 - The same state absorbed a surge in demand: 168,000 customers received an original Enhanced Driver’s License or Enhanced ID in a single quarter of 2025, a 148 percent increase over the same quarter of 2024, with each original application taking up to five minutes longer than a standard renewal and requiring an in-person visit.

Source: Washington State Department of Licensing, Driver Licensing Office Workload Report, 2025 Quarter 3.

Links:

§ WA DOL quarterly report (PDF): https://dol.wa.gov/media/pdf/5020/licensing-office-quarterly-report-2025-q3pdf/download?inline=

A-000129 | SC-6, SC-7 - The United States has organized a national service program at comparable scale before. More than three million men served in the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1942 - described by one historian as the largest peacetime mobilization in American history - with 275,000 enrolled in the first three months and peak enrollment between 300,000 and 500,000 at one time across roughly 2,600 camps.

Source: Living New Deal; National Park Service; Robert D. Leighninger, Jr., Long-Range Public Investment (2007). Note: The Corps recruited during roughly 25 percent unemployment, so its labor supply arose from economic need rather than from willingness to serve. The logistical achievement transfers; the recruiting conditions do not.

Links:

§ Living New Deal summary: https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/civilian-conservation-corps-ccc-1933/

§ Program history: https://www.history.com/articles/civilian-conservation-corps

A-000130 | SC-7 - The Civilian Conservation Corps was executed jointly by federal and state authority: The Department of Labor recruited, the Army provided transportation and ran the camps, enrollees were supervised by Army Reserve officers, each state carried out its own enrollment under a quota set by state population, and unemployed World War I veterans were specifically included.

Source: New Georgia Encyclopedia; Living New Deal; Oklahoma Historical Society.

Links:

§ Structure and agency roles: https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/civilian-conservation-corps/

§ Living New Deal summary: https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/civilian-conservation-corps-ccc-1933/

A-000140 | SC-3, SC-5, SC-7 - The Department of Homeland Security already operates a national biometric repository holding more than 320 million unique identities and processing more than 400,000 biometric transactions each day. The system, called the Automated Biometric Identification System, includes both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens, and both criminal and non-criminal records.

Source: Department of Homeland Security, Office of Biometric Identity Management; DHS information paper on data sharing with state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement (Apr. 2025). Its partners include Customs and Border Protection, FEMA, the Departments of State, Justice, and Defense, state and local law enforcement, and the intelligence community. It is the second-largest biometric system in the world, behind only India’s.

Links:

§ DHS biometrics overview: https://www.dhs.gov/biometrics

§ OBIM data-sharing information paper (PDF): https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-04/25_0414_obim_data-sharing-sltt-law-enforcement.pdf

§ Office of Biometric Identity Management: https://www.dhs.gov/obim

A-000141 | SC-3, SC-7 - The FBI’s national fingerprint index, operating since 1983 and now called Next Generation Identification, is searched by most law enforcement agencies, and its records can be searched alongside the Department of Homeland Security repository without establishing a new connection.

Source: Department of Homeland Security, Office of Biometric Identity Management information paper (Apr. 2025); Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division.

Links:

§ OBIM information paper (PDF): https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-04/25_0414_obim_data-sharing-sltt-law-enforcement.pdf

§ FBI CJIS biometric interoperability: https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/freedom-of-information-privacy-act/department-of-justice-fbi-privacy-impact-assessments/iafis-ngi-biometric-interoperability

A-000144 | SC-2, SC-3 - The current standard fingerprints the clerk, not the applicant. States must conduct name-based and fingerprint-based criminal history records checks against state criminal records and the FBI’s systems on motor-vehicle employees who can affect the identity information appearing on a license, who have access to the production process, or who are involved in manufacturing the cards. Applicants for a compliant credential submit no fingerprints; the only biometric collected is a digital photograph.

Source: REAL ID Act implementing regulations, 6 CFR Part 37; Department of Homeland Security notice of proposed rulemaking (2006); Transportation Security Administration REAL ID guidance.

Links:

§ 6 CFR Part 37: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-6/chapter-I/part-37

§ DHS rulemaking notice (PDF): https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/nprm_realid.pdf

§ TSA REAL ID guidance: https://www.tsa.gov/realid/realid-faqs

A-000148 | SC-7 - The same doctrine leaves federal preemption intact. Federal law can preempt state regulation in whole or in part, and can condition a state’s ability to regulate an activity on conformity with federal standards. What it cannot do is compel the state to carry out the federal program.

Source: Congressional Research Service, “The Supreme Court Bets Against Commandeering: Murphy v. NCAA, Sports Gambling, and Federalism” (LSB10133, 2018).

Links:

§ CRS analysis: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10133

A-000149 | SC-7 - Federal authority is at its strongest where foreign affairs are concerned. In Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts sanctions law as an intrusion on federal foreign policy, and the Constitution assigns naturalization and the regulation of immigration to the federal government.

Source: Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, 530 U.S. 363 (2000); U.S. Const. art. I, sec. 8, cl. 4. This is preemption rather than commandeering: It bars states from contradicting the federal determination, not from declining to assist it.

Links:

§ Foreign affairs federalism analysis (PDF): https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1117769/files/fulltext.pdf

§ Constitution Annotated, naturalization power: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C4-1/ALDE_00013128/

Dissenting Facts (D)

D-000018 | SC-4 - A national survey estimates that more than 49 million American adults do not possess an unexpired driver’s license bearing their current name and address.

Source: Brennan Center for Justice / University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement national survey (2024). (Survey estimate, n=2,386, weighted.)

Links:

▪ Brennan Center: https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/voting-reform/voter-id

▪ CDCE survey results (PDF): https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Voter%20ID%202023%20survey%20Key%20Results%20June%202024%20updatev2.pdf

D-000032 | SC-4, SC-6 - A Harvard Law School institute report calculated that obtaining a nominally free voter identification card typically costs the individual $75 to $175 in underlying documents, travel, and time.

Source: Richard Sobel, “The High Cost of ‘Free’ Photo Voter Identification Cards,” Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, Harvard Law School (2014).

Links:

▪ Harvard Law School summary: https://hls.harvard.edu/today/free-voter-ids-costly-harvard-law-report-finds

D-000081 | SC-4 - The Government Accountability Office found that across the ten states it reviewed, an applicant pays an average of $54 to obtain a state identification card, before any fees for the supporting documents required to apply.

Source: GAO, “Homelessness: Barriers to Obtaining ID and Assistance Provided to Help Gain Access,” GAO-24-105435 (2024).

Links:

▪ GAO report page: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105435

▪ Full report (PDF): https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24105435.pdf

D-000082 | SC-4 - The same GAO review found that people experiencing homelessness face compounding barriers to obtaining identification: No reliably safe place to store documents, loss or destruction of documents during evictions and encampment clearances, difficulty providing a residential address, inability to pay fees, lack of transportation or technology, and - for homeless youth - inability to obtain parental consent.

Source: GAO-24-105435 (2024).

Links:

▪ GAO report page: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105435

▪ Full report (PDF): https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24105435.pdf

D-000083 | SC-4 - Advocates documented a recurring circular barrier: Applicants seeking a state ID were told they needed a birth certificate, and applicants seeking a birth certificate were told they needed a photo ID.

Source: National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, “Photo Identification Barriers Faced by Homeless Persons” (2004).

Links:

▪ NLCHP report (PDF): https://homelesslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Photo-ID-Barriers-Faced-by-Homeless-Persons-2004.pdf

D-000086 | SC-5 - The Social Security number is the standing example of statutory limits eroding: Created in 1935 for the single purpose of identifying earnings covered by the new program, it became a universal identifier used across government and by credit bureaus, hospitals, and educational institutions.

Source: Cato Institute, “If You Value Privacy, Resist Any Form of National ID Cards.” (Cato is a libertarian policy institute; the history of SSN expansion is independently documented.)

Links:

▪ Cato Institute: https://www.cato.org/commentary/you-value-privacy-resist-any-form-national-id-cards

D-000087 | SC-5 - Statutory and policy limits on identity data have been violated in practice: Officers have been found using automated license plate reader access to stalk former partners and to surveil protestors, and a New York State Inspector General investigation found DMV employees improperly accessing motor-vehicle records in violation of both federal law and department policy.

Source: Center for Democracy and Technology issue brief on ALPRs (2026); New York State Inspector General, DMV database access investigation (2025).

Links:

▪ CDT issue brief: https://cdt.org/insights/cdt-issue-brief-automated-license-plate-readers-alprs/

▪ NY Inspector General report (PDF): https://ig.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2025/11/4.3.25-dmv-improper-accessing-of-dmv-database.pdf

D-000088 | SC-6 - Contemporary estimates of the cost of a national identification system ranged from a minimum of $4 billion to $25-30 billion to establish, plus $3-6 billion per year to operate, and a coalition of organizations noted that neither the 9/11 Commission nor any hearing had studied those costs.

Source: Coalition letter to the U.S. Senate (2005), assembled by the American Civil Liberties Union. (Advocacy source opposing the proposal; figures are the coalition’s compilation of third-party estimates.)

Links:

▪ ACLU coalition letter: https://www.aclu.org/documents/coalition-letter-senate-urging-senators-reject-any-proposal-would-lead-creation-national

▪ Companion letter to the House (EFF copy, PDF): https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/realid/20040920_final_national_id_letter_house.pdf

D-000089 | SC-6, SC-7 - The Cato Institute estimated the cost of REAL ID implementation at roughly $17 billion, with state governments bearing the majority, and documented an unprecedented multi-state legislative revolt against compliance in which political leaders of both parties rejected the program.

Source: Cato Institute, “Real ID Laws Are a National Catastrophe” and “The New National ID Systems” (Policy Analysis No. 749, 2014). (Cato is a libertarian policy institute and opposes the Act; cost figures are its own calculations.)

Links:

▪ Cato commentary: https://www.cato.org/commentary/real-id-laws-are-national-catastrophe

▪ Cato Policy Analysis 749 (PDF): https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa749_web_2.pdf

D-000090 | SC-1 - Federal terrorism data is not collected in a form that records the identity or immigration status of offenders: The FBI tracks investigations and the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis tracks incidents, and neither dataset reports whether an offender held valid identification, held multiple identities, or had overstayed a period of admission - so no inference can be drawn in either direction.

Source: GAO, “Domestic Terrorism: Further Actions Needed to Strengthen FBI and DHS Collaboration to Counter Threats,” GAO-23-104720 (2023), describing what each agency collects.

Links:

▪ GAO report page: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-104720

▪ Full report (PDF): https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-104720.pdf

▪ FBI/DHS Strategic Intelligence Assessment (PDF): https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/21_0514_strategic-intelligence-assessment-data-domestic-terrorism_0.pdf

D-000091 | SC-3 - The Interstate Identification Index covers persons arrested for felonies or serious misdemeanors, so its fingerprint deduplication does not extend to people without an arrest record - the population a universal credential would newly cover.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, CJIS documentation on the Interstate Identification Index; Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Links:

▪ FBI CJIS description of the III: https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/freedom-of-information-privacy-act/department-of-justice-fbi-privacy-impact-assessments/iafis-ngi-biometric-interoperability

▪ Bureau of Justice Statistics report (PDF): https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/253816.pdf

D-000102 | SC-1, SC-3 - The largest category of identity theft reported to the FTC in 2024 was credit card fraud, at more than 449,000 reports, of which more than 406,000 involved newly opened accounts rather than charges to existing ones - fraud committed with stolen identity data through remote application, where no identity document is presented.

Source: Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024. (Confirm the exact report counts in the Data Book category tables before freeze.)

Links:

▪ Data Book 2024: https://www.ftc.gov/reports/consumer-sentinel-network-data-book-2024

▪ Interactive data by category: https://www.ftc.gov/exploredata

D-000111 | SC-5 - Detroit’s police chief acknowledged that the department’s facial recognition system produced incorrect results 96 percent of the time when used as the sole method of identification, and the department continued using it.

Source: Detroit Police Department statements, documented in reporting on facial recognition wrongful arrests. Note: This figure concerns facial recognition, not fingerprint matching, and the two differ substantially in accuracy. It bears on this claim as evidence of how agencies behave when a biometric tool is known to be unreliable.

Links:

▪ ACLU on facial recognition reliability: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/police-say-a-simple-warning-will-prevent-face-recognition-wrongful-arrests-thats-just-not-true

D-000112 | SC-5 - The framework the Director of National Intelligence released in May 2024 sets guidelines for intelligence agencies’ purchase and use of commercially available information but does not restrict which types of data - including location or web browsing information - agencies may purchase.

Source: ODNI framework for commercially available information (May 8, 2024); Electronic Privacy Information Center analysis. (EPIC is a privacy advocacy organization and supports restrictions on such purchases.)

Links:

▪ EPIC analysis of the framework: https://epic.org/odni-releases-framework-for-commercially-available-information/

D-000121 | SC-7 - Florida, Tennessee, and Wyoming have enacted laws invalidating out-of-state licenses issued to people without lawful status, with penalties ranging from fines to misdemeanor charges; Florida was first in 2023 under Senate Bill 1718.

Source: State legislation, reported 2025. Bears on SC-7: States are actively legislating in opposite directions on the same credential, which is evidence that uniform implementation faces political resistance, not merely administrative difficulty.

Links:

§ State-by-state summary: https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-immigration-driving-licenses-2115122

D-000131 | SC-5 - Enhanced Driver’s Licenses contain radio frequency identification chips connected to a database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. When California’s legislature passed a bill to issue them in 2015, the governor vetoed it over privacy concerns surrounding the chip, and the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the rollout on the grounds that the chips could be used for tracking and racial profiling.

Source: California Senate Bill 249 (2015) and veto message; American Civil Liberties Union opposition. (The ACLU is a civil-liberties advocacy organization and opposes such credentials.)

Links:

§ California bill analysis: https://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/sen/sb_0201-0250/sb_249_cfa_20150711_165643_asm_comm.html

§ Program description and RFID linkage: https://blog.americansafetycouncil.com/enhanced-drivers-licenses-what-they-are-and-where-to-get-them-2/

D-000132 | SC-7 - Two attempts to extend the citizenship-confirming credential beyond the original five states have failed. California’s legislature passed an authorizing bill in 2015 that was vetoed. Ohio enacted a law in 2023, and no cards were ever issued.

Source: California Senate Bill 249 (2015); Ohio House Bill 23 (2023). (Confirm the current status of the Ohio program against a primary state source before freeze.)

Links:

§ California bill analysis: https://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/15-16/bill/sen/sb_0201-0250/sb_249_cfa_20150711_165643_asm_comm.html

§ Status summary: https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-immigration-driving-licenses-2115122

D-000133 | SC-6, SC-7 - The federal agency that adjudicates citizenship has recently struggled at its current workload. In Fiscal Year 2023, routine passport processing took more than four weeks longer than before the pandemic, driven by record application volume and staff shortages traced to a 2017 hiring freeze; passport specialists worked more than 250,000 hours of overtime that year.

Source: GAO, “Passport Processing: State Department Should Identify Milestones and Resource Needs for Its Plans to Avoid Future Delays,” GAO-25-107164 (Mar. 27, 2025).

Links:

§ GAO report page: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107164

§ Full report: https://files.gao.gov/reports/GAO-25-107164/index.html

D-000134 | SC-7 - The State Department’s modernization plan is incomplete. As of November 2024 it had developed 83 projects to improve passport processing, but as of December 2024 had defined milestones for only 24 of them and none for the remaining 59.

Source: GAO-25-107164 (Mar. 27, 2025).

Links:

§ GAO report page: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107164

§ Full report (PDF): https://www.gao.gov/assets/880/876498.pdf

D-000143 | SC-5, SC-6, SC-7 - The replacement program has repeatedly failed to meet its own commitments. It breached its schedule baseline in 2017, declared a second schedule breach and its first cost breach in 2020, and as of the 2022 rebaseline included no estimate for completing the program. GAO found the cost and schedule estimates unreliable and identified significant shortcomings in program management and privacy.

Source: GAO-23-105959 (2023).

Links:

§ GAO report page: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105959

§ Full report (PDF): https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-105959.pdf

D-000145 | SC-5, SC-7 - At least one state prohibits by statute the use of biometric technology to produce identification documents, including facial recognition, fingerprinting, and retinal scanning.

Source: Maine Revised Statutes, 29-A M.R.S. § 1401(9). The same title makes digital photographs and signatures confidential and limits their use to producing licenses.

Links:

§ Maine statute: https://legislature.maine.gov/legis/statutes/29-a/title29-Asec1401.html

§ Analysis of state non-compliance: https://iapp.org/news/a/why-some-states-wont-comply-with-real-id-requirements

D-000146 | SC-7 - The Supreme Court has held that Congress cannot compel a state to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program, and cannot reach the same result by directing the state’s own officers. In Printz v. United States the Court struck down a federal requirement that local law enforcement officers perform background checks, stating that the federal government may neither issue directives requiring the states to address particular problems, nor command the states’ officers to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.

Source: New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992); Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997); Murphy v. NCAA, 584 U.S. 453 (2018). The Court added that no case-by-case weighing of the burdens or benefits is necessary, which forecloses the argument that a sufficiently important federal interest overcomes the rule.

Links:

§ Constitution Annotated summary: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt10-4-2/ALDE_00013627/

§ CRS analysis of Murphy v. NCAA: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10133

Neutral Record (N)

N-000085 | SC-5 - The REAL ID Act requires participating states to share driver information with other jurisdictions through a network of databases and to store copies of applicants’ source documents, including birth certificates and Social Security records.

Source: REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. 109-13, div. B. Both sides introduce this provision: Opponents cite it as evidence that a national identity database was built by another name; proponents cite it as evidence that the sharing infrastructure already exists, so this claim adds no new capability. Cato Institute analysis, cited below, is a libertarian policy institute that opposes the Act.

Links:

▪ Cato Institute, National ID Systems: https://www.cato.org/cato-handbook-policymakers/cato-handbook-policy-makers-8th-edition-2017/21-national-id-systems

▪ Cato Institute, REAL ID and privacy: https://www.cato.org/commentary/real-id-threatens-privacy-without-adding-security

N-000092 | SC-2, SC-7 - The REAL ID Act of 2005 requires an applicant for a compliant credential to document full legal name, date of birth, Social Security number, two proofs of principal residence, and lawful status, and imposes standards on the card’s security features and on the issuing office’s verification of source documents.

Source: REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. 109-13, div. B; Department of Homeland Security implementing regulations.

Links:

▪ DHS testimony describing the Act’s provisions: https://www.dhs.gov/real-id/news/2012/03/21/written-testimony-plcy-house-committee-judiciary-subcommittee-crime-terrorism-and

N-000093 | SC-7 - Every state, the District of Columbia, and the five territories now issue REAL ID-compliant driver’s licenses and identification cards; compliance is certified by the Department of Homeland Security.

Source: Transportation Security Administration final rule and enforcement notices (2025).

Links:

▪ TSA final rule: https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/01/13/tsa-publishes-final-rule-real-id-enforcement-beginning-may-7-2025

N-000094 | SC-2, SC-7 - REAL ID enforcement took effect on May 7, 2025 - twenty years after enactment - following repeated deadline extensions by successive administrations.

Source: TSA final rule (Jan. 13, 2025); DHS enforcement announcement (May 7, 2025).

Links:

▪ TSA final rule: https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/01/13/tsa-publishes-final-rule-real-id-enforcement-beginning-may-7-2025

▪ DHS announcement: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/07/tsa-begins-real-id-full-enforcement

N-000095 | SC-5 - The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act sets a federal floor rather than a ceiling: States may decline to adopt any of the fourteen permissible uses and may impose stricter rules, and a 2000 amendment requires affirmative consent before a motor-vehicle record may be sold or released to third-party marketers.

Source: 18 U.S.C. § 2721 et seq.; Pub. L. 106-69 (FY 2000 DOT Appropriations Act).

Links:

▪ EPIC summary: https://epic.org/dppa/

N-000096 | SC-5 - The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act’s permissible uses include a broad grant to any federal, state, or local government agency carrying out its functions - which covers law-enforcement queries of motor-vehicle records during investigations, traffic stops, and background checks.

Source: 18 U.S.C. § 2721(b)(1).

Links:

▪ EPIC summary of permissible uses: https://epic.org/dppa/

N-000097 | SC-1, SC-2 - The Congressional Research Service reports that automated license plate reader systems capture license plate number, GPS location, and date and time, retain that data to track vehicle movement over time, compare it against watch lists, and have the potential to identify individuals through facial recognition; no federal appellate court has resolved whether warrantless database access violates the Fourth Amendment.

Source: Congressional Research Service, “Automated License Plate Readers: Background and Legal Issues” (IF13068) and “Law Enforcement and Technology: Use of Automated License Plate Readers” (R48160).

Links:

▪ CRS IF13068: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF13068

▪ CRS R48160: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48160

N-000098 | SC-2, SC-5 - States must mark non-compliant credentials on their face as unacceptable for federal purposes and make them visually distinguishable by unique design or color; DHS cautions that possession of a non-compliant card does not indicate the holder’s immigration status, because people obtain them for many reasons unrelated to lawful presence.

Source: REAL ID Act implementing regulations, 6 C.F.R. Part 37; Department of Homeland Security guidance.

Links:

▪ DHS REAL ID program materials: https://www.dhs.gov/real-id/news/2012/03/21/written-testimony-plcy-house-committee-judiciary-subcommittee-crime-terrorism-and

N-000099 | SC-1 - Federal law enforcement recorded $16.6 billion in reported cybercrime losses in 2024, a 33 percent year-over-year increase.

Source: FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2024 Internet Crime Report.

Links:

▪ Reporting summarizing the IC3 figure: https://www.foxnews.com/tech/last-years-breach-years-identity-fraud

N-000100 | SC-1, SC-6 - The Department of Homeland Security recorded 538,548 overstay events in Fiscal Year 2024 against 46,657,108 expected departures - people admitted lawfully who remained past their authorized period with no recorded departure, extension, or adjustment of status.

Source: DHS / U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Entry/Exit Overstay Report, Fiscal Year 2024, Report to Congress.

Links:

▪ DHS FY2024 overstay report (PDF): https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/25_0912_cbp_entry-exit-overstay-report-fiscal-year-2024.pdf

▪ DHS FY2025 report, with FY2023 trend data (PDF): https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-12/25_0716_cbp_entry-exit-overstay-report-fy25.pdf

N-000101 | SC-1 - Consumers reported losing more than $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, a 25 percent increase over 2023 and the largest year-over-year jump the agency has recorded, with investment scams the single largest category at $5.7 billion.

Source: Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024 (Mar. 10, 2025). The Data Book is based on unverified reports filed by consumers and is not a consumer survey. Note: This figure covers fraud overall - investment scams, imposter scams, text-message fraud - most of which involves no identity document. It bounds the universe in which credential-related fraud sits; it does not measure it.

Links:

▪ Data Book 2024: https://www.ftc.gov/reports/consumer-sentinel-network-data-book-2024

▪ Announcement with the investment-scam figure: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/03/new-ftc-data-show-big-jump-reported-losses-fraud-125-billion-2024

▪ Interactive data: https://www.ftc.gov/exploredata

N-000109 | SC-5 - Reported Section 702 queries of U.S. person information have fallen sharply - to 57,094 in 2023 and 5,518 in 2024, rising to 7,413 in 2025 - but the reported totals are incomplete, because the FBI did not count queries performed using certain filtering tools, and in March 2026 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found that practice ongoing across the intelligence community.

Source: ODNI Annual Statistical Transparency Report (Apr. 2025); FBI letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee (Mar. 11, 2026); FISA Court opinion (Mar. 2026, classified). Both sides introduce this: Defenders of the authority cite the decline as evidence that reforms work; critics cite the counting changes and the court’s finding as evidence the numbers understate the true volume.

Links:

▪ ODNI transparency report (PDF): https://www.intelligence.gov/assets/documents/702-documents/statistical-transparency-report/ASTR_CY24.pdf

▪ Brennan Center on Section 702: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/section-702-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act

▪ Reporting on the 2025 increase: https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2026/03/fbi-queries-americans-data-under-fisa-702-rose-35-2025/412103/

N-000110 | SC-3, SC-5 - A newspaper investigation identified at least eight Americans wrongfully arrested after facial recognition identified them as suspects with no other corroborating evidence, seven of the eight being Black, with arrests made by police in fifteen departments across twelve states in violation of those departments’ own written policies.

Source: Washington Post investigation (2025); American Civil Liberties Union documentation of wrongful-arrest cases. Both sides introduce this: It demonstrates the harm caused when identity is established badly, and it demonstrates the risk of building identity systems on probabilistic matching.

Links:

▪ ACLU case documentation: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/more-than-a-dozen-wrongful-arrests-due-to-police-reliance-on-facial-recognition-technology

▪ Innocence Project summary: https://innocenceproject.org/news/artificial-intelligence-is-putting-innocent-people-at-risk-of-being-incarcerated/

N-000114 | SC-1 - The DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics estimates 11 million unlawfully present immigrants were living in the United States on January 1, 2022, up from 8.46 million in 2000, and publishes breakdowns by period of entry, country of origin, state of residence, age, and sex.

Source: DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics, Estimates of the Illegal Alien Population Residing in the United States, FY 1990-2022. (Estimate produced by the residual method described in A-000113, not a count.)

Links:

§ OHSS population estimates: https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/illegal/population-estimates

§ USAFacts summary of the OHSS series: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-unauthorized-immigrants-are-in-the-us/country/united-states/

N-000115 | SC-1 - Pew Research Center estimates the unlawfully present population reached 14 million in 2023, after two consecutive years of record growth.

Source: Pew Research Center (Aug. 21, 2025). (Estimate produced by the residual method, not a count.)

Links:

§ Pew Research Center: https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-reached-a-record-14-million-in-2023/

N-000118 | SC-2, SC-7 - As of 2026, nineteen states and the District of Columbia issue driver’s licenses to people without lawful immigration status, and those licenses are marked as not acceptable for federal purposes and cannot be used for federal identification or air travel.

Source: National Conference of State Legislatures; National Immigration Law Center. Both sides introduce this: Proponents cite it as proof the two-tier structure already exists and functions; opponents cite it as proof that states have made a deliberate policy choice this claim would override. The National Immigration Law Center is an advocacy organization that supports extending such licenses to all states.

Links:

§ NCSL summary: https://www.ncsl.org/immigration/states-offering-driver-s-licenses-to-immigrants

§ State-by-state map: https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-immigration-driving-licenses-2115122

N-000120 | SC-7 - California issued 110,000 licenses to immigrants in the country illegally during the first seven weeks its program operated, and projected 1.4 million over three years.

Source: California Department of Motor Vehicles figures, reported by the Associated Press (2015).

Links:

§ Associated Press report: https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/california-issues-110k-drivers-licenses-to-undocumented-immigrants/

N-000122 | SC-2, SC-7 - Section 202(d)(11) of the REAL ID Act expressly authorizes states to issue driver’s licenses and identification cards that are not acceptable for official federal purposes, and federal regulations at 6 CFR Part 37, Subpart F set standards for those non-compliant cards.

Source: REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. 109-13, div. B, sec. 202(d)(11); 6 CFR Part 37. Both sides introduce this: Supporters of state licensing cite it as express federal authorization; critics cite it as the provision that created a second tier the 9/11 Commission had asked Congress to close.

Links:

§ REAL ID Act text (PDF): https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/real-id-act-text.pdf

§ 6 CFR Part 37: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-6/chapter-I/part-37

N-000123 | SC-2, SC-7 - Federal law makes a person who is not lawfully present ineligible for state and local public benefits, except that a state may extend eligibility through a state law enacted after August 22, 1996 that affirmatively provides for it.

Source: 8 U.S.C. § 1621(a) and § 1621(d). All nineteen states that issue credentials to illegal immigrants did so by state statute enacted after that date - New Mexico in 2003, Utah in 2005, and the remaining seventeen between 2013 and 2023.

Links:

§ 8 U.S.C. § 1621: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid%3AUSC-prelim-title8-section1621&num=0&edition=prelim

N-000135 | SC-2, SC-7 - United States passports do not record fingerprints. Ten-fingerprint collection applies to non-citizens: Consular officers and Customs and Border Protection collect digital fingerprints and a photograph from non-U.S. citizens between the ages of 14 and 79 applying for visas or arriving at major ports of entry. The biometric chip introduced in U.S. passports in 2006 stores the facial image.

Source: U.S. Department of State, Foreign Affairs Manual 9 FAM 403.2; DHS Office of Biometric Identity Management; State Department testimony on biometric passports (2005).

Links:

§ Foreign Affairs Manual: https://fam.state.gov/fam/09FAM/09FAM040302.html

§ Congressional testimony on passport biometrics: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-109hhrg26515/html/CHRG-109hhrg26515.htm

N-000136 | SC-6, SC-7 - The State Department issued more than 27 million passport books and cards in Fiscal Year 2025, its highest single-year volume, following approximately 24.5 million in 2024 and 22 million in Fiscal Year 2022.

Source: U.S. Department of State (Oct. 2024); Bureau of Consular Affairs (2026).

Links:

§ State Department 2024 announcement: https://2021-2025.state.gov/record-breaking-achievements-in-u-s-passport-processing/

§ FY2025 volume reported: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/it-modernization/2026/04/cx-exchange-2026-state-departments-matt-pierce-on-iteratively-meeting-record-demand-for-u-s-passports/

N-000137 | SC-7 - Each state that issues a citizenship-confirming credential must negotiate its own agreement with the federal government. Customs and Border Protection enters into one or more agreements with a state specifying requirements for developing and issuing the credential, including a testing and auditing process; after production, testing, and audit, the Secretary of Homeland Security or the CBP Commissioner may designate it, announced by notice in the Federal Register. Each program is specific to the state, based on that state’s funding and technology.

Source: 8 CFR 235.1(d); Federal Register designation notices for Washington (2008), New York (2008), Vermont and Michigan (2009), and Minnesota (2015); Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, sec. 7209.

Links:

§ Minnesota designation notice: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/07/13/2015-17043/designation-of-an-enhanced-drivers-license-and-identity-document-issued-by-the-state-of-minnesota-as

§ New York designation notice: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2008/12/02/designation-of-an-enhanced-drivers-license-and-identity-document-issued-by-the-state-of-new-york-as

§ Washington designation notice: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2008/04/03/E8-6819/designation-of-an-enhanced-drivers-license-and-identity-document-issued-by-the-state-of-washington

N-000138 | SC-3 - Single-fingerprint identification degrades sharply as the database grows. Federal testing found single-finger identification provides 95 percent accuracy against a gallery of 500 records, 90 percent against 10,000, and 86 percent against 100,000, and concluded that high-accuracy searching of a database of one million subjects or greater requires more than one fingerprint.

Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology, summary of standards for biometric verification.

Links:

§ NIST summary (PDF): https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2021/10/25/nist_appendix_pact_nov02.pdf

N-000139 | SC-6 - The citizenship-confirming credential carries a modest surcharge where it is offered. Washington charges a $35 application fee, a $1 technology fee, and $16 per year, totaling $116 for five years. New York charges a $30 enhanced document fee in addition to standard licensing fees.

Source: Washington State Department of Licensing; New York State Department of Motor Vehicles.

Links:

§ Fee summary: https://blog.americansafetycouncil.com/enhanced-drivers-licenses-what-they-are-and-where-to-get-them-2/

§ Washington DOL guide: https://dol.wa.gov/driver-licenses-and-permits/enhanced-driver-license-edl/guide-enhanced-driver-licenses-edl

N-000142 | SC-6, SC-7 - A replacement system is already funded and under construction. The Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology program, begun in 2016, carries an estimated total life cycle cost of about $4.2 billion and is scaled to hold biometrics for 500 million people.

Source: GAO, “Biometric Identity System: DHS Needs to Address Significant Shortcomings in Program Management and Privacy,” GAO-23-105959 (2023); DHS Privacy Impact Assessment for HART Increment 1 (Feb. 2020).

Links:

§ GAO report page: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105959

§ Full report (PDF): https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-105959.pdf

N-000147 | SC-7 - None of the cases establishing that limit involved national security. They concerned the Fugitive Slave Act (1842), low-level radioactive waste disposal (1992), handgun background checks (1997), and sports gambling (2018).

Source: Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842); New York v. United States (1992); Printz v. United States (1997); Murphy v. NCAA (2018). Both sides introduce this: Supporters of a national requirement note the doctrine has never been tested against a national security interest; opponents note the Court said no weighing of interests is necessary.

Links:

§ Overview of the four cases (PDF): https://s3.amazonaws.com/tacdocs/The+Anti-Commandeering+Doctrine.pdf

§ Constitution Annotated: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt10-4-2/ALDE_00013627/

N-000150 | SC-7 - Legal scholarship has argued that the anti-commandeering doctrine should also run in the other direction, protecting federal sovereignty from state overreach in the immigration context, on the reasoning that federalism preserves a balance between two sovereigns rather than protecting only one.

Source: Duke Law School faculty scholarship (2013). Note: This is an academic argument, not a holding. No court has adopted it.

Links:

§ Duke Law scholarship abstract: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/2819

Sub-Claim Cross-Reference Matrix

Legend: Built from the sub-claim tags in the registry. Three dashes means no direct factual entry in that lane yet.

Known Gaps

This registry is a first tranche. The following gaps are open, and we state them rather than paper over them:

▪ SC-3 rests on capability, not on measured results. A-000075 and A-000076 establish that fingerprint-based national identification works and that name-based identification does not. What no source establishes is how much harm a universal credential would actually prevent, because no country comparable to the United States has adopted this exact requirement. D-000091 states the strongest objection.

▪ SC-6 rests on a single affirming fact. A-000084 prices one consequence of lacking a credential. Beyond it we have cost estimates from opponents and no independent or official cost study of a universal requirement. Official REAL ID implementation cost data from states would fill this.

▪ The cost of the overstay population is unmeasured. N-000100 records more than half a million overstay events in a single year. A number that size carries cost and risk. We have not found research estimating the financial or safety cost.

▪ Seizure counts are floors, not totals. A-000077 through A-000079 count counterfeit documents that were intercepted. Nothing in the record establishes what share of shipments is caught, so these figures set a minimum and cannot support a claim about the total volume in circulation.

▪ No current polling. As noted in Q1 | Meaning Section XI, the available national-identification polling is roughly two decades old and asked about carrying a card and about fingerprints. This claim does not requiring carrying a card, but does require biometric authentication of identity.

▪ Issuance-fraud prosecutions are not yet catalogued. Convictions for bribery and document fraud at motor-vehicle offices bear directly on SC-2 and are possibly underreported. This is reserved for a separate claim.

▪ Nobody knows the size of the population whose status is unrecorded. A-000113 explains why: It is estimated by subtraction, not counted. The official DHS figure and the leading independent estimate differ by three million,[N-000114, N-000115] and Congress has asked DHS to explain the divergence.[A-000116]

▪ Whether citizenship verification can be performed as a records check rather than a full adjudication. About half of American adults hold a passport, meaning their citizenship has already been determined [N-000136]. Whether confirming an existing record costs materially less than deciding a new claim is the question on which any national schedule depends, and we have found no study of it.

▪ Enhanced Driver’s License fraud findings. A-000127 and A-000128 supply issuance volumes, and N-000137 describes the federal audit process, but we have not located published error rates or fraud findings from the five issuing states.

Source Index

Alphabetical list of all sources cited in the registry. Sources are unnumbered; the permanent IDs belong to facts, not sources. Where a source is an advocacy organization or a policy institute with a stated position, that position is disclosed in the entry itself.

404 Media · American Civil Liberties Union · Bureau of Justice Statistics · Center for Strategic and International Studies · Associated Press · Brennan Center for Justice · Cato Institute · Center for Democracy and Technology · Charles Hamilton Houston Institute (Harvard Law School) · Congressional Research Service · Congress.gov · Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (18 U.S.C. § 2721) · Electronic Frontier Foundation · Electronic Privacy Information Center · Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court · Federal Bureau of Investigation (IC3) · Federal Bureau of Investigation (CJIS) · Federal Reserve Bank of Boston · Federal Trade Commission · FinCEN (U.S. Treasury) · Government Accountability Office · Identity Theft Resource Center · Illinois State Police · Innocence Project · Javelin Strategy & Research · Maracich v. Spears (U.S. 2013) · National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty · NBC News · New Jersey Monitor · New York State Inspector General · Office of the Director of National Intelligence · Oregon Secretary of State · REAL ID Act of 2005 · Reno v. Condon (U.S. 2000) · The 9/11 Commission Report · Transportation Security Administration · U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence · U.S. Customs and Border Protection · U.S. Department of Homeland Security · University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement · Washington Post

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution ┃Summary

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution┃Summary

What Is Best for the Common Good?

Evidence is noted in [ ]

I. Recap

Q1 | MEANING

This claim proposes a universal identity standard. Every adult in the United States must hold and keep current one government-issued photo credential - or one for identity and one for citizenship - answering three requirements: Who are you? May you be here? And, are you a citizen? Identity is confirmed by ten fingerprints and both iris images, collected at enrollment and at each renewal.

It is a duty to possess, not to carry. It applies to residents and visitors staying longer than ninety days. It builds on the REAL ID standard, now met by every state, and on the Enhanced Driver’s License, which has proven citizenship in five states since 2009. Both are voluntary today. This claim proposes the first unconditional requirement.

Q2 | EVIDENCE

Our registry holds 92 facts: 43 affirming, 22 dissenting, and 27 neutral. Every fact links to its source so you can check it yourself. For each fact we verified two things: Its lane - Affirming, Dissenting, or Neutral; and that the source actually states what we summarize. How much weight each fact deserves is up to you.

Q3 | IMPACT

The seven sub-claim results, in one line each:

▪ SC-1 The harm is large, growing, and officially measured. What is not measured is the share a credential would address.

▪ SC-2 Current systems are insufficient, flawed, and under attack. This is the strongest sub-claim.

▪ SC-3 The method works and has for forty years. Its magnitude is unmeasured.

▪ SC-4 The burden is real and lands on identifiable groups, but most of it is a matter of how the law is written.

▪ SC-5 The surveillance the public fears is already here and was built without any credential. A better index is not a new power - but it is not harmless either.

▪ SC-6 We cannot validate this sub-claim. The program is costed only by its opponents.

▪ SC-7 The systems exist and are national. Feasibility is not the obstacle - the schedule and the legal mechanism are.

UNKNOWNS

Everything below remains open. We state these rather than fill them with estimates:

1. How much harm a universal credential would prevent. We can prove the method works and that the problem is large. Nobody has measured the connection.

2. What a universal requirement would cost. Every figure available comes from an organization opposed to it. None assess the cost of merely adding to existing systems.

3. The cost and risk carried in the overstay population - 538,548 events in one year, with no research quantifying what it means to manage or enforce.[N-000100]

4. What share of counterfeit documents is intercepted versus active. Seizure counts are floors; the denominator is unknown.[A-000077, A-000078]

5. Whether statutory use restrictions hold under a universal system.[A-000071, D-000087, D-000112]

6. Public support for this claim as stated. The available national-identification polling is two decades old and asked about carrying a card and about fingerprints - neither of which this claim requires.

7. Whether the Supreme Court would permit a federal mandate on the states where national security is the interest. It has never ruled on that question,[N-000147] and the doctrine as written forecloses the argument.[D-000146] Section 13 proposes the path that does not require an answer.

II. Solution

OBJECTIVE: What’s best for the common good?

Identity is one cornerstone of every safeguard for the American republic. Background checks, watchlists, benefit eligibility, employment authorization, and border screening all assume the system knows who a person is. When that assumption fails, every protection built on top of it fails with it - risking national security and public safety.

Three cases demonstrate the costs of not having an effective .

One. Stolen from children.

Corey Cato, sentenced September 2022 to 94 months in federal prison, ordered to pay $1,908,481 in restitution.

Cato and co-conspirators created synthetic identities by combining false names and dates of birth with the Social Security numbers of real people, then used those identities and fake ID documents to open bank and credit card accounts. The stolen Social Security numbers included those belonging to children.

He rented an Atlanta apartment under the name “Jason Brown” using a stolen Social Security number and a fake California driver’s license, and maintained a mail drop where the synthetic identities received their bank statements while insulating his real address from detection.

The children whose numbers he used will find out years from now, when they apply for a first loan.

Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, press release
https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/georgia-man-sentenced-over-7-years-prison-synthetic-identities-scheme-defrauded-banks

Two. Eight IDs from one DMV.

The 9/11 Commission staff report found that all but one hijacker obtained some form of state identification, and that six used those state IDs to check in for their flights on September 11.

Seven of the nineteen fraudulently obtained authentic driver’s licenses through the Virginia DMV.

The mechanism, stated by the Commission’s own sources: Airline personnel told 9/11 Commission staff that the Virginia IDs let the hijackers appear assimilated and avoid the greater scrutiny that showing Saudi, Lebanese, or UAE passports would likely have triggered - scrutiny that, according to those personnel, would likely have uncovered the knives and pepper spray they carried, potentially foiling the plot.

The failure was at issuance: Virginia’s requirements were loose enough that unscrupulous lawyers and notaries ran a thriving market processing applicants, with forms that were easy to fake accepted in place of standard proofs.

The documents were real. The identities behind them were not. That is the failure this claim exists to close.

Source: 9/11 Commission staff report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel,” Chapter 2
https://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Ch2.pdf

Already in our registry as A-000065 and A-000124.

Three. A murderer with four credentials.

Johnny Lee Allen was convicted of second-degree murder in Nebraska in 1999 and sentenced to 35 to 50 years. He was released in April 2019. Four months later he used a stolen identity to obtain a Wyoming ID card. Then an Oregon identification card with the same stolen identity. Then an Oregon driver’s license. Then a second Oregon license using his brother’s name.

He used those fraudulently obtained documents in multiple firearm transactions. He cancelled twice when the background check was delayed, and obtained a pistol anyway through someone else. A convicted murderer, absconded from parole, defeated three state issuance processes and used the credentials to try to buy guns.

This claim and related claims seek to eliminate this risk

Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Oregon, press release
https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/man-parole-after-murder-conviction-sentenced-prison-identity-theft-and-making-false

What the three have in common.

None of these failures happened at the moment the credential was shown. All three happened at the counter where the credential was applied for, approved (federal or state), and issued. Our current system to accurately confirm an individual’s identity is broken, and therefore dangerous to citizens.

A credential’s strength is dependent on the process and people who deliver it.

Americans must have a system that accurately connects a person to their real identity, or exposes a poser. This is not surveillance. It is the opposite: It is the difference between taking reasonable steps to maintain national security and public safety versus irresponsibly extending opportunities for evil to be inflicted on citizens and visitors to our nation.

What we expect this claim to do about illegal immigration.

We expect a universal credential recording citizenship status to help limit and better manage illegal immigration. That is a national security and public safety benefit.

Federal statisticians estimate between 11 and 14 million illegal immigrants live in the United States.[N-000114, N-000115]

Illegal immigrant credentials: Nineteen states and the District of Columbia issue credentials to illegal immigrants, marked as invalid for federal purposes.[N-000118] To establish who the applicant is, those states accept a foreign birth certificate, foreign passport, or consular card, and in one state a sworn affidavit.[A-000119]

Foreign credentials: No American authority can verify those records against the government that issued them.

Documents we cannot verify are more vulnerable to fraud than documents we can, and that is not theoretical: A September 11 hijacker was admitted on a passport carrying fraudulent stamps the inspector did not detect and, in the Commission’s own assessment, could not have been expected to detect.[A-000124]

Congress was wrong to build that structure into the REAL ID program because these loopholes violate federal immigration laws and possibly other laws.

REAL ID was enacted to close the gap the 9/11 Commission identified, But unfortunately politicians designed the solution to enable states to create national security and public safety risks by allowing people to remain in the country who are here against the law.

Instead, REAL ID Section 202(d)(11) authorized a second tier of credentials,[N-000122] federal law left states free to extend benefits to illegal immigrants by affirmative state statute,[N-000123] and nineteen states filled that tier with people whose presence federal law makes unlawful.

Three states have since passed laws refusing to recognize those credentials from other states.[D-000121]

Whether the loophole was carelessness or something else, we let you decide The failure is federal, and it is a failure of design.

This claim does not validate that failure. Nor does it address enforcement, removal, or who should be admitted - those are immigration questions belonging to existing law and potential future claims in this library.

This claim has three components: Are you who you say you are? Are you authorized to be here? And, are you a citizen? For millions of people, no current document except a passport answers the last two.

We say this with respect for immigrants, including those here unlawfully, most of whom work hard and harm no one. Fair laws, applied to everyone, are what the common good requires.

A country that cannot control its borders and criminals, cannot maintain its covenant identity, personal safety, and resources.

OUR VERDICT

The facts support this claim - conditionally.

#1 - Cost

Six of seven sub-claims survived the evidence. The seventh, cost, we could not validate, because no independent or official estimate of a universal requirement exists.[D-000088, D-000089]

We do not treat this as fatal, because the infrastructure is already built and paid for: Every state issues a compliant credential today,[N-000093] and the national fingerprint index has run since 1983.[A-000075]

The question is what it costs to extend a system, not to build one - which no one has calculated.

#2 - Surveillance

SC-5 discussed concerns this claim might expand government surveillance. Q3 concluded this claim is an opportunity for citizens to confirm the structure of this law - in contrast to REAL ID - respects their rights, reinforces laws designed for national security and public safety, increases reporting of non-confidential information, and simplifies fair, strict accountability in how this law is administered.

The key regarding surveillance concerns is how the law is written, monitored, and violations prosecuted.

This should become law only with the limits based on Section 9 (below) written into it. A version of this law without those limits is a different proposal, and we do not support it.

#3 - Enactment

▪ The Supreme Court has held that Congress cannot compel a state to enact or enforce a federal program, or reach the same result by directing the state’s own officers. [D-000146, A-000148] (Sections 4, 13)

However, no case establishing that rule involved national security or foreign policy,[N-000147]

▪ If no new information is found to overcome the concern with the Supreme Court, then we advocate this law be enacted the way REAL ID was: The requirement then falls on the person, not the state.

Federal law sets the standard, declines to recognize anything that does not meet it, and preempts any state credential that contradicts a federal determination of status.[A-000148, A-000149] That approach compelled no state and still reached 94 percent compliance.[A-000070]

However, separate of the challenge of homeless people maintaining current identity, the intent of this law is 100% citizen compliance, not the 94% achieved by REAL ID.

WHAT THE LAW MUST INCLUDE

Every requirement below comes from Q2 | Evidence, where the bracketed numbers can be found, and each points to the section of the draft law that delivers it:

1. One credential answering all three requirements - identity, lawful status, and citizenship - because a card that answers the first two forces every institution to verify the third separately, at its own cost, and leaves the status of millions unrecorded.[A-000113, N-000114, N-000115] (Sections 3, 8)

2. One person, one record. A card cannot confirm this by itself. It requires ten fingerprints and both iris images checked against a shared record at issuance and each renewal - the combination produces more than ten times fewer errors than either method alone.[A-000125, A-000126] (Section 6)

3. Issuance integrity. The process of enrollment, management of updates, and renewal must include multiple verification checks to avoid criminal violations and administrative errors. Two states enrolled thousands of people improperly through ordinary administrative failure.[A-000059, A-000060] (Section 6)

4. Verification of foreign source documents, or a stated limit on what they can establish. No American authority can check a foreign birth certificate, passport, or consular card against its issuing government, and fraud in such a document went undetected at the border in a case the 9/11 Commission examined. Also, certain foreign governments or their employees may endorse fraudulent identification that may support anti-American activities.[A-000119, A-000124] (Section 6)

5. A free credential and free source documents for those who meet a state’s standard of need - the average card costs $54 before the documents required to apply, and the full cost of a nominally free ID runs $75 to $175.[D-000081, D-000032] (Section 7)

6. An end to the circular barrier, where a birth certificate is required to get an ID and an ID is required to get a birth certificate.[D-000083] (Section 7)

7. Mobile units staffed by government employees, reaching people who cannot reach an office.[D-000082] (Section 7)

8. A path for people without an address, because the two-proofs-of-residence rule does not merely burden them - as written, it disqualifies them.[D-000082] (Section 5)

9. A list of permitted uses, a private right of action, and access logs the individual can inspect - consistent with existing law - because restrictions on identity data have been violated, and statutory limits have eroded before.[D-000086, D-000087] (Section 9)

10. Personal liability for intentional misuse. Organizational penalties alone did not stop officers from using database access to stalk former partners.[D-000087] (Section 10)

11. Identity confirmed against the credential, not inferred from a probabilistic match. Federal and state law enforcement should confirm identity against the credential and its biometric record. (Section 11)

12. Stated enrollment objectives at the outset and monthly public reporting against them, so the law is measured against what it promised rather than against how it feels. (Sections 2, 12)

13. A temporary service corps to facilitate the enrollment, because the agencies that would do this work are already at capacity.[D-000133, D-000134] (Section 13)

14. No net increase in cost to the government, by funding the program from a modest driver’s license fee or federal fee rather than from general revenue. States make their own funding decisions. Should federal funding be necessary for new equipment and a temporary service corps, that appropriation must be built into this law. (Section 7)

Any fee or appropriation authorized by this law ends with the five-year implementation schedule and may not be extended. New federal law approved by the voters is the only way to continue federal funding beyond that term. (Section 7)

III. Implementation

Simple Liberty Foundation is an educational organization. We research, publish, and teach. We do not lobby or endorse candidates. This research is a first step in public education on this claim. The next steps are:

▪ Engage with individuals - Simple Liberty Members and others - in civil dialog on the facts of this claim, to sharpen the key details.

▪ Study and engage with organizations that came before us with similar proposals, including those that oppose this one, to consider their research and results.

▪ Seek the cost estimate this claim could not find. Of everything unresolved, this is the gap most likely to be closed by someone willing to do the work.

▪ Publish, as education for the people and their representatives: The model law that follows, refined by what we learn; a constitutional analysis of how federal and state responsibilities align; what the law requires, who implements it, and on what schedule; and a list of laws that become unnecessary if it passes.

Whether to act on this education belongs where it always has: With the people and those they elect.

IV. The Draft Law

MODEL LAW - FOR EDUCATION AND PUBLIC DISCUSSION. This is not filed legislation. It is a teaching draft, written in plain language, showing what a law that honors the evidence would say. A state legislature could adapt it for state credentials; Congress could adapt it for the federal standard.

THE IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP VERIFICATION ACT

Section 1 - Name.

This law may be called the Identity and Citizenship Verification Act.

Section 2 - Why This Law Exists, and What It Must Achieve.

The enacting body finds that:

▪ Identity is one cornerstone of every safeguard for the American republic. When the system cannot accurately confirm who a person is, then background checks, watchlists, benefit rules, and employment authorization all fail together.

▪ Counterfeit credentials are cheap, and some of them work. Documents that scan correctly have been seized by the tens of thousands, and generative tools have lowered the skill required to make them.

▪ Issuance can accidentally fail without fraud. Two states enrolled thousands of people improperly through ordinary administrative error, undetected for up to three years.

▪ No law requires an adult to hold identification at all. Every current requirement is a condition on an activity a person may decline.

Between 11 and 14 million illegal immigrants live in the country, and the leading estimates differ by millions. A country that cannot confidently state a reasonably accurate estimate of the number of people here illegally cannot limit the risk or resolve the problem.

▪ Extensive government data collection already exists and was built without any national credential. This law improves accuracy.

The enacting body further declares the objectives this law must achieve, against which it shall be measured under Section 12:

▪ Every eligible adult holds a current credential.

▪ No eligible person is denied one for cost, distance, or lack of an address.

▪ One person holds one identity record.

▪ No use of credential data occurs outside the list in Section 9.

Section 3 - Definitions.

In this law:

▪ “Credential” means a current photo identification document issued by a federal, state, or federally recognized tribal government that meets or exceeds the federal minimum standard and records the holder’s citizenship status. The requirement may be met by one document, or by one for identity and one for citizenship.

▪ “Maintain” means to obtain the credential, keep it unexpired, and update it when name, address, or status changes. It does not mean to carry it.

▪ “Adult” means a person eighteen years of age or older.

▪ “One person, one record” means that no individual holds more than one active identity record in the system.

Section 4 - What Every Adult Must Do.

Every adult present in the United States shall maintain a credential. This is a duty to possess. This claim does not address how it is enforced.

This duty falls on the person. No state is required to issue the credential, and no state officer is required to administer this law. A state may decline to participate; its credentials then do not satisfy this standard, and its residents obtain one through the federal channel established under Section 13.

Section 5 - Who Must Comply, and When.

▪ A visitor present ninety days or less satisfies this law with the credential their own government issued and the record of their admission.

▪ Any person present longer than ninety days shall hold an American credential meeting the standards of this law. Duration is the trigger, not status.

▪ Presence is counted as cumulative days within a rolling twelve-month period, not days since the most recent entry.

▪ A new resident, or a person reaching the age of eighteen, has ninety days to obtain the credential.

A person without a fixed address shall not be denied a credential for that reason. The enacting body shall establish an alternative to the two-proofs-of-residence requirement combined with the biometric - 10 fingerprint and both eye iris scan - requirement. Approaches used elsewhere for alternative yet stable addresses include a shelter or service-provider address of record, a designated agent, or a declaration made under penalty of perjury. The selection is the choice of the participating state. The federal government decides which option for states, if any, that decline to participate.

Section 6 - Issuance Integrity.

The issuing agency shall:

• Scan every source document and transmit the files to the appropriate federal agency responsible for that verification under Section 13 for verification against its issuing authority before the credential is produced.

• Treat a source document issued by a foreign government as unverifiable, and apply the limits the enacting federal agency establishes for what such a document may and may not establish.

• Collect ten fingerprints and both iris images at enrollment, and confirm before the credential is produced that the applicant is not already enrolled under another name. Collect them again at each renewal and repeat the confirmation.

• Audit a sample of issuances each month and report the error rate under Section 12.

• Log every issuance decision, including the identity of the employee who made it, date and time stamped.

• Apply every requirement of this section to the provisioning of a digital credential to a device, which is an issuance event.

Section 7 - Who Pays.

No person shall be charged for the cost of a credential required by this law who meets the state’s standard of need. Each state shall set that standard and fund the program. For those who qualify, the state shall also provide at no charge:

▪ The source documents this law requires, including birth certificates.

▪ Mobile issuance units, staffed by government employees, serving communities distant from a permanent office, who follow a similar process as used for in person registration.

The enacting state body can fund this program from a modest increase in the standard driver’s license fee and/or other fees rather than from general revenue, so that the requirement imposes no net increase in cost to state government. Appropriations may be adjusted for inflation each year.

Section 8 - What the Credential Records.

Every credential shall record, legibly on its face: The holder’s identity, the holder’s lawful status, and whether the holder is a citizen of the United States. A credential issued to a person whose authorization has a term shall show that term. The term may not exceed ten years.

The credential may be issued in physical and digital form. A digital credential shall conform to the international standard for mobile identity documents, shall be cryptographically signed by the issuing authority, and shall permit the holder to disclose only the information a given verification requires. A physical credential shall be issued to every holder regardless of whether a digital credential is also issued.

Section 9 - Limits on Use.

Government entities are limited in their use of data from these credentials as follows:

▪ This law does not change existing law pertaining to how government agencies may use credential information to carry out their functions, even if the systems managing this data becomes upgraded as part of this law.

▪ Individuals are given a simple, secure process to revise their information as needed, due to change in residence, marriage, divorce, and other pertinent personal information.

▪ Each access to a person’s credential record shall be logged with the identity of the person who accessed it, the date, and the stated purpose. Documentation standards for current government agency access does not change under this law. The individual may inspect their own log.

▪ Individuals confirm their preferred federally identification approval process to access the log of activity on their credential when they register for the credential.

▪ Any person whose credential data is accessed outside this list may bring a civil action against the individual and the organization responsible, and recover damages, costs, and fees specific to the actual costs they incurred.

Section 10 - Consequences.

The federal government shall establish consequences for the following three offenses. We recommend the following principles and do not specify penalties when this law is broken:

▪ An individual who knowingly obtains or holds more than one identity record, or who obtains a credential by fraud.

▪ A private entity or individual who accesses another person’s credential data outside the list in Section 9.

▪ A government entity or employee who accesses another person’s credential data outside the list in Section 9.

A person who has simply let a credential lapse has not committed an offense under this section unless the credential has been expired for more than ninety days.

The government body issuing the credential will notify the individual ninety, sixty, forty-five, thirty, fifteen, and five days before expiration, and at one, fifteen, thirty, forty-five, sixty, and ninety days after expiration of their need to renew. For expediency and to limit cost, these notifications should be via email or text, but postal mail can be an option.

Section 11 - Law Enforcement Use.

Confirming identity is part of law enforcement work, and this credential exists in part to increase the accuracy of that process. This law does not restrict an officer from confirming a person’s identity against the credential where the officer has authority to do so.

Section 12 - Proof It Works.

Each month, the implementing agency shall publish aggregate information online, against the objectives stated in Section 2:

▪ Number of active credentials without categorization of sex, location, etc.

▪ Credentials issued, by category, and the number issued at no charge.

▪ Applications denied, and reason.

▪ Number of individuals with duplicate credentials identified, the number duplicate identity records eliminated, and cause of duplicate credentials - categorized by the cause: Individual’s error, administrative error, or criminal - and resolution status.

▪ Violations of Section 9 identified, and their disposition.

The report is a standard query against the agency’s own records and shall not require a separate study. Where a stated objective is not being met, the report shall say so plainly.

Section 13 - Who Implements, What, and When.

Each government does the work it already does.

▪ The State Department confirms citizenship. It makes this determination every time it issues a passport and already holds the record for roughly half of American adults.[N-000136] States do not make citizenship decisions.

▪ The Department of Homeland Security sets the credential standard, certifies participating states, confirms lawful status for non-citizens, and operates the shared biometric record.[A-000140]

▪ A participating state’s motor-vehicle offices collect the documents and the biometrics, transmit them for verification, and issue the credential once it clears. They gather; they do not decide.

▪ Where a state declines to participate, the Department of Homeland Security shall establish a federal enrollment channel serving that state’s residents. No state is compelled and no resident is excluded.

The credential builds on the Enhanced Driver’s License program already active in five states and on the REAL ID standard met by every state.

Enrollment shall be completed within five years of enactment. The enacting body should expect that schedule to be demanding: The current federal standard was enacted in 2005 and did not reach enforcement until 2025.[N-000094] Roughly half of adults already hold a passport, so their citizenship is confirmed by records check rather than new adjudication.[N-000136] All of them still require biometric enrollment, because United States passports record no fingerprints.[N-000135]

Credentials renew every eight years, matching the current federal standard. Fingerprints and iris images are recollected at each renewal.

A National Identity Service Corps shall be established for the five-year enrollment period, federally funded, drawing on the National Guard, active and retired military, and others who wish to serve, trained and assigned to supplement state and federal enrollment offices. The agencies that would otherwise carry this work are already at capacity. [D-000133, D-000134] This country has organized an effort of this size before: More than three million men served in the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1942, with the Department of Labor recruiting, the Army running camps, and each state enrolling under a population quota. [A-000129, A-000130]

Section 14 - Laws This One Replaces.

The enacting body shall list the laws and administrative rules that become unnecessary when this law passes, and repeal them.

Section 15 - If a Court Strikes Part.

If any part of this law is held invalid, the rest remains in effect - except Section 9. If Section 9 is struck in whole or in substantial part, this law shall not take effect. The limits are the condition on which the requirement rests.

V. Status

In public discussion. (August 2026)

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution┃Summary

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution ┃Summary

What Does This Claim Mean?

Evidence is noted in [ ]

I. The Claim

This claim proposes a universal identity standard. Every adult in the United States must hold - and keep current - one government-issued photo identification document, or one for each purpose, that verifies who they are, confirms federal authorization for them to be on American soil, and records their citizenship status.

Five phrases carry the weight of the claim, and each has a precise meaning.

A. “Every adult”

This requirement applies to every adult resident or visitor, not only citizens. Adult defined as eighteen years old or older.

B. “Must hold and keep current”

This is a requirement to possess, not a requirement to carry it at all times. The obligation is administrative and continuous: Obtain the credential, keep it unexpired, and update it when name or address changes - the same requirement that already attaches to a driver’s license.

A duty to produce identification on demand, or to answer for its absence, is a different law with its own consequences, and is not part of this claim. Section VI discusses this.

C. “Verifies who they are”

Verification means two things:

1. Authentication - the holder is the person the credential names. This is the purpose of a photograph, a signature, and a document check.

2. Uniqueness - one person holds one identity record. No enrollment under more than one name, no identity built from the records of dead people, no single individual appearing in the system as multiple different people.

Authentication without uniqueness is a risk to public safety. This credential lacks value if the system to maintain it is flawed, or corrupt individuals intentionally violate the process. In these two instances, a credential can be genuine and correctly matched to its holder, but allow an individual to have multiple apparently valid credentials.

This is unacceptable because each additional identity is an opportunity for financial crime, evading a criminal record or a protective order, and/or violence committed by someone the system cannot trace.

Thus, this claim asserts uniqueness as a requirement. A card cannot confirm uniqueness by itself. The only way to know a person is not already enrolled under another name is to compare something about the person - not something about the document - against everyone already enrolled.

This means biometrics are needed. This claim adopts the standard proven at national scale: Ten fingerprints and both iris images, collected once at enrollment and checked against the shared record before a credential is issued. Neither method alone is sufficient at this size. Used together, they produce more than ten times fewer errors than either produces alone.

The shared record that makes the check possible, and the statutory limits that must govern every other use of it, are set out in Section XIII.

D. “Confirms federal authorization for them to be on American soil”

The credential confirms the holder’s lawful status: Citizen, lawful permanent resident, or a visitor authorized for a stated term. Where the authorization has an end date, the credential shows it.

This requirement does not grant permission to be in the country. Immigration status is determined by the State Department and Department of Homeland Security.

A key purpose of this credential is to confirm existing federal determination on a person’s identification card, so an employer, benefits agency, or licensing board can confirm what the government already decided rather than guessing or going to the expense of confirming on its own.

Today the REAL ID standard verifies lawful status when the person registers, but the card does not display the status. Section IV sets out what that costs.

E. “Records their citizenship status”

The credential, or a separate credential meeting these requirements, records citizenship status. A citizen’s card records citizenship; a lawful resident’s card records lawful residence and the term of that authorization.

This claim proposes that the recorded status be legible on the credential itself.

F. What the claim would build on

This claim does not invent a document category or the systems to support it. The following programs and systems exist now:

1. State Department - a federal record of citizenship determinations, held for everyone who has been issued a passport, covering roughly half of American adults.

2. Department of Homeland Security - a national standard for state-issued photo identification, in the REAL ID Act of 2005, met today by every state.

3. Department of Homeland Security - a federal biometric repository of more than 320 million identities that holds both citizens and non-citizens and both criminal and non-criminal records, assembled from border crossings, visa applications, background investigations, and arrests.

4. State motor-vehicle offices - a credential that confirms citizenship, in the Enhanced Driver’s License, issued in five states since 2009, where state offices collect the documents and the federal government designates the result.

5. Federal Bureau of Investigation - a national fingerprint index, operating since 1983 as part of the criminal justice system and now called Next Generation Identification, covering people who have been arrested.

6. India’s national identity system - ten-print and iris enrollment operating today at a scale of more than a billion people, demonstrating that the method works at this size.

Three things do not exist:

• There is no requirement to hold a single credential that confirms all three requirements and confirms they are current.

• No American identification system for the general public collects fingerprints or iris images at credential issuance.

• No American record has been built by enrolling the general population - the repositories above were assembled from encounters, so a person who has never had one is not in them.

Section IV sets out what each existing system does today, and what would have to change.

II. The Sub-Claims: What Must Be Proven

The claim has seven sub-claims. Affirming, Dissenting, and Neutral facts for each are presented in Q2 | Evidence, and their outcomes are examined in Q3 | Impact. Sub-claims 1-3 assert the problem is real and important, whereas sub-claims 4-7 assert the absence of unacceptable side effects.

• SC-1 - Unverifiable and fraudulent identity causes documented harm to national security and public safety, and that harm is likely undercounted.

• SC-2 - Current identity-document systems are insufficient and eroding: Standards are unevenly enforced, issuance is error- and fraud-prone, and counterfeits and AI-generated documents are lowering the cost and raising the amount of identity fraud.

• SC-3 - Universal possession of a current, standards-compliant photo ID would reduce the risk to public safety.

• SC-4 - All eligible people would be able to obtain and maintain one.

• SC-5 - The requirement does not expand government surveillance of law-abiding people: It adds no capability government does not already possess and use, and the credential’s permitted uses are limited by statute.

• SC-6 - The cost and effort are justified.

• SC-7 - It can be implemented fairly and uniformly, and the process already exists in multiple states.

III. The Credential

This section covers what makes a document qualify at all - who issued it, and what makes it trustworthy. What the document must confirm is the subject of Section IV.

A. “Government-issued”

This term excludes all private credentials - employee badges, membership cards, school IDs issued by private institutions, store accounts. Only a government records the events that establish identity - birth, naturalization, lawful admission - and only a government maintains the records against which those events are checked.

B. What makes a credential secure

The REAL ID Act of 2005 sets the national minimum. An applicant must document full legal name, date of birth, Social Security number, two proofs of principal residence, and lawful status.

The standard also governs the card itself - security features resistant to tampering and counterfeiting - and the issuing office, including verification of the source documents presented.

Every state, the District of Columbia, and the five territories are certified compliant. Compliance is determined by the Department of Homeland Security, not by the state.

C. Qualifying credentials

Under this claim, a credential qualifies if it is issued by a United States government - federal, state, or federally recognized tribal - and meets or exceeds the federal minimum standard.

These typically include REAL ID-compliant state driver’s licenses and identification cards, U.S. passports and passport cards, Enhanced Driver’s Licenses, military identification cards, and tribal identification cards issued by federally recognized tribes, accepted as issued.

D. Source documents are not credentials

A foreign passport with a valid visa and approved admission record is accepted as evidence of identity and lawful status when applying for a state credential. It feeds the verification process. It is not a full qualification on its own.

Foreign documents carry a verification gap that American documents do not. No American authority can check a foreign birth certificate, passport, or consular card against the records of the government that issued it. Documents we cannot verify are more vulnerable to fraud than documents we can, and a credential built on them inherits that vulnerability.

The gap is real: A September 11 hijacker was admitted on a passport carrying fraudulent stamps that the inspector did not detect and, in the 9/11 Commission’s own assessment, could not have been expected to detect.

Every foreign document accepted at an issuance counter can produce a genuine American credential, which means the integrity of American identification depends in part on records the United States cannot audit. This is a vulnerability under SC-2.

E. The non-compliant tier

States also issue credentials that do not meet the federal standard. These cards must state on their face that they are not acceptable for federal purposes, and must be visually distinguishable by unique design or color.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia issue such credentials to illegal immigrants. To establish who the applicant is, those states accept a foreign birth certificate, foreign passport, or consular card, and in one state a sworn affidavit. Section IV returns to what this tier does and does not confirm.

IV. What the Credential Must Confirm

A. The three requirements

A credential under this claim must answer three questions:

1. Who are you? The holder is the person the credential names, and that person appears in the system only once.

2. May you be here? Lawful status - citizen, lawful resident, or authorized visitor.

3. Are you a citizen? The status that determines which rights and benefits the law reserves.

B. What today’s credentials answer

• REAL ID cards are issued to lawfully present noncitizens - permanent residents, and holders of employment authorization, Temporary Protected Status, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals among them - with states relying on federal systems to confirm status.

  Certain categories receive only limited-term credentials, tied to the expiration of the underlying authorization. One concern is a compliant card issued to a citizen and one issued to a lawful resident may be visually indistinguishable.

  REAL ID is the only standard that is national and already met everywhere - and it already meets two of the three requirements.

• Enhanced Driver’s License programs meet all three requirements. Offered by Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington, an EDL provides federally recognized proof of both identity and U.S. citizenship. Only U.S. citizens who can prove citizenship are eligible; a permanent resident card or work visa will not obtain one. In Washington alone, 2.26 million people hold one - a third of that state’s cardholders.

  But the EDL exists in only five states, each under its own separately negotiated federal agreement, and two attempts to add a sixth have failed.

• U.S. passports are federally issued rather than state issued, prove citizenship, and are held by about half of adults, but record no fingerprint or iris scan biometric data.

This confirms three facts:

1. A citizenship-confirming state credential is not hypothetical - it has operated since 2009.

2. Credentials that meet the three requirements are federally designated, not a state improvisation.

3. State motor-vehicle offices can collect and forward the documents that establish citizenship, and issue the credentials.

C. What would have to change

The existing structure stops short in three respects:

1. Status is verified at issuance, but is not consistently legible on the credential.

2. Standards and timeframes to maintain credentials are inconsistent, and automated renewal can confirm payment without confirming the facts that support continued validity.

3. Multiple credentials carry overlapping data, and in some cases critical data is missing entirely - so the same facts get verified repeatedly, by different institutions, at their own cost.

Closing these gaps does not require a new agency or a new document. It requires assigning each task to the government agency that already performs it.

This claim asks for one credential confirming all three requirements, or one confirming the first two and a second to confirm the third: The credential(s) confirms who you are and that you are only one person in the system, whether you may be here, and whether you are a citizen.

Q3 | Impact examines what this would take. Q4 | Solution proposes a draft law.

V. Who Must Comply, and When

The requirement of this claim attaches to presence in the United States, and it scales with the length of that presence.

1. Visitors present ninety days or less satisfy the requirement with the credential their own government issued, together with the record of American government approval of their admission. The United States does not issue identification to short-term visitors, and their identity has already been verified at the border.

2. Anyone present longer than ninety days must hold an American government-issued credential meeting this new federal standard. Duration is the trigger, not status: A student on a multi-year visa, a worker on temporary authorization, a permanent resident, and a citizen all must meet this claim’s requirements.

3. New residents and those reaching adulthood have ninety days - running from their legal arrival in the USA, or the date of their eighteenth birthday - in which to obtain the credential.

The ninety-day line defines who must obtain an American credential and when. Short-term visitors do not - their identity was verified when they were admitted, and they leave before any domestic system needs to know them.

This new law also applies to a large, mostly undocumented population in America. Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants living in the United States range from the federal government’s 11 million to independent estimates of 14 million or more.

Everyone staying longer must meet this standard for national security and public safety reasons, but also because it benefits them. This credential allows them to engage with American institutions: Opening an account, enrolling in school, seeing a doctor, signing a lease, taking a job. These are example situations where identity matters to someone other than the person holding the credential, and where an unverified identity does its damage.

Here is an additional, important detail: The law must count cumulative days an individual is on American soil within a rolling twelve-month period, so the law can eliminate a departure-and-return cycle that resets the person’s permission to be in our country indefinitely. The process to manage that count is examined in Q3 | Impact.

VI. What the Claim Is Not

It is not a carry mandate. This claim does not address how law enforcement uses the credential.

The requirement this claim establishes is to obtain the credential and keep it current. That is all. It does not require anyone to have it on their person at all times, and it does not specify how law enforcement applies the law to do their job.

This claim also carries four requirements whose remaining components are larger than it can settle. They are listed in Section XIII.

VII. What Current Law Does Not Require

No federal law and no state law currently requires an adult to obtain or maintain a current government-issued photo identification document.

Also, no general-purpose federal card that meets the three requirements of this claim is available to an ordinary adult, and Congress has repeatedly declined to create one.

A driver’s license is required to drive; a passport is required to travel abroad; a REAL ID is required to board a commercial aircraft. Each is a condition on an activity, and a person who forgoes the activity has no obligation at all.

The REAL ID Act was drafted to set standards for state credentials rather than to establish a federal card, understood at the time as the constitutionally and politically available path.

The current system is optional, and built on conditional requirements. Due to advancing security threats from technology and AI, this claim proposes the first unconditional identification requirement in American law.

VIII. What Threats This Claim Addresses

This claim addresses three threats to public safety, all of them growing as technology and AI advance. The risks are most significant to those least equipped to recover - the elderly, the poor, and those least familiar with these systems - but affect us all:

Q2 | Evidence tags each fact to its sub-claim and Q3 | Impact considers its impact.

IX. How Proponents Explain the Claim

Sources: Department of Homeland Security, the 9/11 Commission, national-security policy institutes, immigration-enforcement advocates.

1. Identity is a cornerstone of every other safeguard. Background checks, watchlists, benefit eligibility, and border screening all assume the system knows who a person is. When that assumption is wrong, national security and public safety are at risk.

2. The 9/11 Commission asked for this. It found that the hijackers acquired identification documents that let them operate inside the country, and recommended federal standards for the sources of identification. REAL ID was the response, left half-finished - an optional, incomplete standard rather than a requirement.

3. Fraud is getting cheaper and better. Counterfeit credentials sell online for the price of a fast food meal, and generative tools have lowered the skill required to defeat automated checks.

4. The burden is already borne by nearly everyone. Identification is required to see a doctor, open a bank account, rent an apartment, start a job, buy a car, or board a plane. The claim formalizes an obligation most adults already meet.

5. The cost of the gap falls on the public. Where identity cannot be verified, the cost is absorbed by hospitals, employers, landlords, benefit agencies, and law enforcement - which then increase prices to cover the cost.

6. What identity hides is a public-safety problem. Prior convictions, outstanding warrants, protective orders, and firearm prohibitions attach to a name, and a second false identification eludes capture. The current safeguards are failing, and creating unnecessary risk to the public.

7. Citizenship is a status the law already distinguishes. A credential that cannot confirm citizenship forces institutions to verify it separately, badly, or not at all - at their own additional cost, which is then passed onto the public.

8. The government already runs the systems this would require. Citizenship records, the credential standard, a biometric repository of more than 320 million identities, and a national fingerprint index are all operating today, in the agencies that would carry out this claim (Section F).

X. How Opponents Explain the Claim

Sources: American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cato Institute, National Immigration Law Center, and state-sovereignty advocates. Opposition runs from both the civil-libertarian left and the limited-government right.

1. It is an internal passport in substance. A universal credential becomes the key to ordinary life, and a duty to hold it becomes, in practice, a duty to produce it - regardless of what the statute says about carrying.

2. Function creep is the historical rule. The Social Security number was created for a single program and became a universal identifier. Limits written into statute have consistently eroded, and the burden is on proponents to explain why this claim will play out differently.

3. States have already said no, and one has said no by statute. Maine prohibits its own government from using biometric technology to produce identification documents, including facial recognition, fingerprinting, and retinal scanning. California’s legislature passed a citizenship-confirming credential and the governor vetoed it over the tracking risk. Ohio enacted one and never issued a card.

4. A status marking is a marking. A card that displays citizenship makes status visible in every transaction where the card is shown, and invites discrimination that would otherwise require an inquiry no one would make.

5. The infrastructure is the risk. Verifying uniqueness at national scale requires a national record. The database, not the card, is the actual proposal - and databases are breached, subpoenaed, sold, and repurposed - or abused by the government.

6. The burden falls where it always falls. Millions of adults lack a current credential, and obtaining one costs documents, travel, and time. A mandate converts that gap from an inconvenience into a legal violation.

7. REAL ID’s own history is the counter-argument. A standard enacted in 2005 needed roughly two decades and repeated extensions to reach enforcement - evidence that identity infrastructure is harder, slower, and costlier than advocates predict.

8. It is a federal answer to a state question. Identity documents have always been issued by the states, and a national duty shifts authority in a direction the Constitution does not clearly authorize.

XI. Public Opinion

Public support for identity verification is not the same as support for this claim.

Requiring photo identification to vote draws roughly 83 to 84 percent support, with majorities in every partisan group.

A national identification card has historically polled far lower: Gallup found 54 percent support for requiring all adults to carry a government-issued national ID including fingerprints, and Fox News found 55 percent called national ID cards a good idea in 2006, down from 62 percent in 2002.

Three cautions apply:

1. The national-ID polling is old, taken when security sentiment was unusually high after September 11, 2001, with no comparable recent measurement available.

2. Those questions asked about carrying a card and about fingerprints - neither of which this claim requires.

3. The roughly thirty-point gap between the two measures is too large to be explained by wording alone.

Known gap: No current polling tests this claim as stated - a duty to maintain, not carry, a state-issued credential recording citizenship status. Q2 | Evidence records the facts available.

XII. Scenarios the Claim Must Resolve

1. Adults who have never held identification. A first credential requires source documents - most often a birth certificate - that cost money and time. Who bears that cost, and how the record is reconstructed when missing, must be specified.

2. Adults who already hold a passport. Their citizenship has already been determined by the federal government, so the expensive step is done. What remains is biometric enrollment, because U.S. passports do not record fingerprints. Whether confirming an existing citizenship record costs materially less than deciding a new one is the question any national schedule depends on, and it has not been measured.

3. Credentials that expire. A duty to maintain implies a possible moment of non-compliance when a card lapses - whether the holder let it run out or the authorization expired. What follows from that moment, and whether a lapse of authorization is an immigration matter or an administrative one, can significantly affect SC-5.

4. How identification is renewed. The automated process of driver’s licenses is susceptible to fraud. Automated renewal raises the question of whether identity is re-verified at all, or only payment is confirmed. The process must be specified.

5. The homeless adult. The federal standard requires two proofs of principal residence. A person without an address cannot satisfy it as written. This is the clearest case of a group the claim would exclude unless it provides otherwise.

6. The naturalized citizen. A credential recording status must be updated when status changes. Who initiates that update, and how quickly the record follows the fact, must be specified.

7. The long-staying visitor. A person admitted for a short visit who remains past ninety days crosses the threshold in Section V. How they obtain a credential, and the process to resolve the issue, must be specified.

8. The person holding multiple identities. Any universal enrollment will encounter people enrolled more than once, some innocently and some not. This claim must specify the process to resolve this issue where applicable.

XIII. Requirements Within This Claim

Each of the following is a requirement of this claim. The requirement is established here. One component of each is larger than this claim can settle, and will be researched separately.

A. Fingerprint and iris scan uniqueness in a shared national database

This claim adopts the biometric standard - ten fingerprints and both iris images at enrollment, stated in Section I(C). This is necessary to confirm uniqueness in a world where falsified information is becoming easier, less expensive, and commonplace due to technology and AI advancements.

Confirming that a person is not already enrolled under another name requires a record shared across states.

• The FBI has operated a national fingerprint index since 1983, now called Next Generation Identification, covering people who have been arrested.

• The Department of Homeland Security operates a larger one - the Automated Biometric Identification System, holding more than 320 million identities, including citizens and non-citizens, criminal and non-criminal records.

Neither was built by enrolling the general population; both were assembled from encounters.

Extending this standard to everyone raises the question: What may that record be used for, by whom, and under what limit?

This will be researched by our team as a separate claim under the issue of Republic, in the topic of Citizenship.

B. Immigration status verification

A credential that records status can be used to verify visitation and citizenship status, and we believe it should - at the points where the law requires it of citizens or lawful residents.

Examples include employment verification, benefit eligibility, and various types of licensing. What the credential may be checked for, and by whom, is discussed in SC-5.

This claim does not address enforcement, removal, or who should be admitted. This will be researched by our team as a separate claim under the issue of Security, in the topic of Immigration.

C. Voter registration and verification at the polls

Claim #04-003-002 proposes that government-issued photo ID and signature verification be required at the time of voting, and it names this claim as one of its dependencies.

Based on the facts, both are needed: A universal credential recording citizenship makes verified voting simpler and more accurate, and verified voting is one of the strongest public justifications for the credential.

Each is a significant change to American law. Both increase trust in our government systems, protect the integrity of citizenship, and strengthen the simplicity of identification verification for activities involving the public safety.

This has been researched by our team as a separate claim under the issue of Elections, in the topic of Election Integrity.

D. Issuance integrity

The value of any credential depends entirely on the integrity of the organization, individuals, and process that issues it. A fraudulently obtained genuine credential defeats most every check downstream.

Issuance integrity is named in SC-2, and Q2 | Evidence treats failures of issuance as evidence bearing directly on whether current systems are secure, and whether consequences for knowingly violating the law are quick and meaningful.

However, the process to improve issuance integrity is a separate claim. This will be researched by our team as a separate claim under the issue of Security, in the topic of National Defense.

XIV. Conclusion

This claim proposes that every adult in the United States hold and keep one current government-issued photo credential that establishes who they are and they appear in the system only once; their lawful status, meaning their right to be on American soil; and whether they are a citizen.

Ideally this is a single card. Where one card cannot yet answer all three questions, the requirement may be met by credentials that meet this standard and together establish identity, lawful status, and citizenship.

It builds on a federal standard that already exists in the REAL ID program, and Enhanced Driver’s Licenses - a citizenship-confirming credential that already operates in five states. Today both are voluntary, and identification is required only as a condition of some activity a person may decline.

This claim does not require citizens and visitors to carry this identification at all times, nor does it specify law enforcement’s policies to confirm individual identity and consequences.

Its validity rests on seven sub-claims outlined in Section II above.

We recognize and respect concerns regarding the fifth sub-claim. We will work through that and the others in Q2 | Evidence, Q3 | Impact, and Q4 | Solution.

We encourage you to consider the facts in Q2 | Evidence, the effects of this potential law in Q3 | Impact, and what’s the best solution for the common good in Q4 | Solution.

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution ┃Summary

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution ┃Summary

Who And What Does This Claim Impact?

Evidence is noted in [ ]

I. Introduction

Q1 | Meaning explained what this claim means. Q2 | Evidence listed the facts. Below we explore what happens if the claim becomes law - who and what are affected, and how much. Our proposed solution is provided in Q4 | Solution.

We run every claim through four tests to consider its impact:

• Who and What are affected?

• How Big is it, based on the evidence?

• Options: What can be done to limit the negatives and increase the positives?

• Projections: What happens over time?

NOTE: Evidence is referenced in [] - e.g., Evidence A-000075 is listed as [A-000075] and can be found on the Evidence page.

We trust evidence in this order:

1. Laws and court records

2. Official records and audits

3. Peer-reviewed studies

4. Surveys - estimates, not counts (see “Is That a Fact?”)

5. Claims from advocacy groups

II. Solution Dependencies: What This Claim Needs to Work

This claim requires every adult to hold one credential answering three questions: Who are you? May you be here? Are you a citizen?

The following dependencies are important to this claim.

#1 - One person, one identity.

Due to advancing security threats from technology and AI, this claim seeks to fully confirm every individual citizen and visitor to our nation exists only once in the federal government identification systems.

This claim adopts the standard proven at national scale: Ten fingerprints and both iris images, collected once at enrollment and renewal. Used together they produce more than ten times fewer errors than either produces alone,[A-000125] and single-fingerprint matching fails outright above a million records.[N-000138]

The infrastructure exists. India confirms a single identity for more than 1.4 billion people using this combination,[A-000126] and the United States already operates two biometric systems at national scale (SC-7).

Offenders commonly use false names that a name-based check will not detect, and fingerprints are a proven method of identification.[A-000076]

What our current systems do not include are people who have never had an encounter with DHS or been convicted of a crime. None were built by enrolling the general population, and the current U.S. general population credential process collects no fingerprints or iris images at all - it fingerprints many types of government employees involved with these systems, but not the general public.[A-000144]

#2 - Issuance must be sound.

The accuracy of a credential depends on the process and people that issued it. Two states have demonstrated the impact of failure:

• A New Jersey software error enrolled roughly 6,600 noncitizens over a year.[A-000059]

• Oregon mis-recorded more than 1,600 applicants because staff selected the wrong document type.[A-000060]

Neither was fraud. Both were administrative failure, undetected for months or years. This dependency sits inside SC-2, and the strength of this claim depends on creating and maintaining one credential per individual.

#3 - Voting. Claim #04-003-002 proposes photo ID and signature verification at the time of voting, and names this claim as a dependency.

A universal credential recording citizenship makes verified voting simpler; verified voting is one of the strongest public justifications for the credential. Each is tested separately.

#4 - Limits on what government may collect and how it may use it.

This claim proposes one credential. This data, separate of biometric information, is already being collected by the government and has existing laws limiting its access and usage. These systems were built without a national credential mandate.[A-000103, A-000105, A-000108]

Surveillance concerns are considered under SC-5. Government data collection and permitted use will be researched by our team as separate claims.

#5 - Each government agency does the job it already does.

This claim assigns no new function to any agency. The division of work is set out in Q1 | Meaning, Section IV: The State Department confirms citizenship, Homeland Security sets the standard and operates the biometric repository, and state motor-vehicle offices collect and issue.

• Each dependency fails without the others. A credential built on unsound issuance, or without limits on use, is not the credential this claim proposes.

III. Testing Each Sub-Claim

SC-1 | Unverified identity causes real harm, and the harm is likely undercounted.

The harm is documented:

• The FTC received more than 1.1 million identity theft reports in 2024.[A-000067] Reported fraud losses across all categories reached $12.5 billion that year, a 25 percent jump, though most came from investment and imposter scams rather than credential fraud.[N-000101]

• Industry estimates put 2025 identity fraud losses at $27.3 billion against a record 3,322 U.S. data compromises,[A-000074] and the FBI recorded $16.6 billion in reported cybercrime losses in 2024, up 33 percent.[N-000099]

• Synthetic identity fraud - a fictitious person built on a real Social Security number - is the fastest-growing type of identity theft, and the numbers are most often taken from children, the elderly, the homeless, and the dead, because nobody notices for years.[A-000068]

• All but one of the nineteen September 11 hijackers acquired some form of U.S. identification, some by fraud, and those documents let them board flights and rent cars.[A-000065]

• Between 11 and 14 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, a figure produced by estimating the foreign-born population and subtracting the lawfully present.[A-000113, N-000114, N-000115] Most hold no document answering if they may be here or whether they are citizens.

• Congress has asked the Secretary of Homeland Security why the official estimate and the leading independent estimate differ by millions.[A-000116] A growing share of that population entered legally, was recorded at the border, and then vanished from the record as they overstayed their visas.[A-000117]

• CBP states that counterfeit identity documents are used by foreign terrorist organizations, criminal organizations, and fraud schemes to avoid attracting attention.[A-000080]

• Aliases defeat name-based records checks, and law enforcement says so in its own public guidance.[A-000076]

What the evidence does not show:

• Federal terrorism data is not generally collected in a form that records whether an offender held valid identification, held several identities, or had overstayed an admission.[D-000090]

Summary of SC-1: The harm is large, growing, and officially measured.

What is not measured is the extent a required universal credential would limit or eliminate the harm. Most identity theft is theft of identity data - a stolen Social Security number used to open an account online, where no document is presented.

The largest category reported to the FTC in 2024 was credit card fraud, and more than 406,000 of those 449,000 reports involved newly opened accounts.[D-000102] The FTC publishes report counts, but not losses by category, so the share a credential would address cannot be priced from the public record.

This credential is focused on identity confirmation, not confirmation of other documents or accounts an individual acquires. It reaches three categories:

• Fraud committed by presenting false identification to a person or a scanner.

• Synthetic identities, which a biometric check at issuance would catch.

• One person or entity currently or attempting to operate under several enrollments.

There is another important fact to consider: DHS recorded 538,548 overstay events in Fiscal Year 2024.[N-000100] We have found no research measuring the cost or the risk carried in that number, but it is reasonable to think the cost is significant.

SC-2 | Current systems are insufficient, and technology is making them weaker.

The standard took twenty years to arrive:

• The 9/11 Commission recommended federal standards for identification sources in 2004.[A-000066] REAL ID was enacted in 2005.[N-000092] Enforcement began May 7, 2025, after repeated deadline extensions.[N-000094]

Meanwhile the counterfeits improved:

• CBP seized 19,888 counterfeit U.S. driver’s licenses at one Chicago facility in just six months of 2020.[A-000077] Louisville seized 7,789 in fourteen days in 2022; Chicago 4,345 in a single month of 2025.[A-000078]

Two details in those seizures matter more than the volume: Many licenses shared one photograph across different names, and the barcodes on counterfeit Michigan licenses scanned correctly.[A-000079]

• An online service sold realistic fake IDs for $15.[A-000013] The Treasury has warned that AI-generated identity documents are defeating verification at financial institutions.[A-000014] The Federal Reserve reports generative AI now automates synthetic identity creation, including fabricating supporting records.[A-000069]

• Foreign documents carry a verification gap. Nineteen states accept a foreign birth certificate, passport, or consular card to establish identity,[A-000119] and no American authority can check those records against the government that issued them.

A September 11 hijacker was admitted on a passport carrying fraudulent stamps the inspector did not detect and, in the Commission’s assessment, could not have been expected to detect.[A-000124]

And issuance itself fails:

• Congress passed laws that authorized exceptions to existing immigration-related laws. Section 202(d)(11) of the REAL ID Act expressly permits states to issue credentials that are not acceptable for federal purposes,[N-000122] and federal law permits states to extend benefits to illegal immigrants by affirmative state statute.[N-000123] Nineteen states used both provisions.[N-000118]

• A non-compliant card fails to confirm if the holder is here legally. States must mark these cards as unacceptable for federal purposes. DHS warns the current marking says nothing about immigration status.[N-000098]

• New Jersey: ~6,600 improper registrations from a software error, undisclosed for up to three years.[A-000059]

• Oregon: 1,600+ from staff mis-selecting document types.[A-000060]

• The current process collects nothing that would catch a duplicate. States must run fingerprint-based criminal history checks on motor-vehicle employees who can affect what appears on a license. Applicants submit no fingerprints; the only biometric collected is a photograph.[A-000144]

• The scale is significant. California alone issued 110,000 such credentials in the first seven weeks of its program and projected 1.4 million over three years.[N-000120]

Summary of SC-2: It is true that current systems are insufficient, flawed, and under attack by criminals.

• The safeguards are weaker than the public assumes, and the tools to defeat them are cheaper and better every year.

• A seizure count is a floor, not a total - nothing in the record establishes what share of shipments is caught - so the true volume of fake IDs in circulation is higher than the numbers above, by an unknown multiple.

SC-3 | A universal standard would reduce the harm.

What supports it:

• The standard this claim adopts is measured, not assumed: Ten fingerprints and both iris images together produce more than ten times fewer errors than either alone,[A-000125] and the combination confirms a single identity for 1.4 billion people today.[A-000126] Name-based identification does not work at this scale.[A-000076, N-000138]

• When the REAL ID requirement arrived, people accepted it. Compliance at airport checkpoints ran 81 percent on the first day of enforcement, 93 percent two weeks later, and above 94 percent by December 2025.[A-000070]

New standard:

• The Interstate Identification Index already removes duplicate records for anyone arrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor. Yet, it does not consider people without an arrest record - which is the majority of our population. This claim would include everyone for the first time.[D-000091]

• No country comparable to the United States has adopted this exact requirement, so no measured prevention data exists anywhere.

Summary of SC-3: The evidence establishes that existing methods limit the harm, but the data has limits and does not measure what a universal credential would add:

• The method works, at national scale, and has for forty years.

• Current data does not confirm the magnitude of benefits - how much harm a universal credential would actually prevent.

• Criminals - anyone with an arrest history - who has multiple identities gets caught today.

• People without an arrest record, whether through innocence or simply never having been caught, are not considered.

Our Q4 | Solution must weigh these facts.

SC-4 | All eligible people would be able to obtain and maintain one.

Who could be shut out:

• A survey estimates more than 49 million American adults lack government-issued photo identification with their current name and address.[D-000018] (Survey estimate, weighted.)

• GAO found an average $54 charge for a state ID across ten states, before the documents needed to apply,[D-000081] and a Harvard institute put the full cost of a nominally free ID at $75 to $175.[D-000032]

• People experiencing homelessness face compounding barriers: No safe place to store documents, loss during evictions and encampment clearances, no residential address, no transportation.[D-000082]

• A circular barrier is documented: A birth certificate is required to get an ID, and a photo ID is required to get a birth certificate.[D-000083]

On the other side:

• REAL ID compliance moved from 81 percent to above 94 percent within months of enforcement.[A-000070] When people needed the credential, most got it quickly.

Options:

• Make the credential free along with the underlying documents for those who meet a standard of need. The cost should be a burden of state governments and could be covered by an increase in driver’s license fees or other state fees.

• Break the circular barrier by statute - a single verified enrollment producing both records, rather than each requiring the other[D-000083] - and accept an alternative to a residential address, since the two-proofs-of-residence rule is the provision that excludes people without one.[D-000082]

• Mobile unit issuance staffed by government employees, reaching people who cannot reach an office.

• Embrace the biometric confirmation of this claim - 10-fingerprint and both iris scans - to fully confirm people who lack an address.

Projections - what is left:

• The residual burden is documents, travel, and time - the three costs that survived every free-ID program studied.

• The homeless population is the most challenging, but as mentioned above, there are solutions.

Summary of SC-4: There is a burden, it is measurable, and it is reasonable for the vast majority of people and resolvable for the rest.

• The REAL ID experience suggests the residual group - people without identification - is smaller than the survey estimates imply once the credential is actually required.

• The fixes are known and listed above: A free credential, free documents, mobile issuance, and a statutory end to the circular barrier.

• The exception is people without an address, for whom the current federal standard is not merely burdensome, but disqualifying as written.

SC-5 | The requirement does not expand government surveillance of law-abiding people.

What supports it:

• The government says so itself. A declassified report by the Director of National Intelligence found that the intelligence community buys growing volumes of commercial data, including sensitive location data, and does not know how much it holds or what it does with it.[A-000103]

  The same report states that government could never have compelled people to carry tracking devices or log their reading habits - yet smartphones, connected cars, and web tracking produced that effect anyway.[A-000104]

• What agencies buy and scrape dwarfs any credential. Six federal agencies have bought smartphone location data from commercial brokers, and FOIA litigation confirmed ICE and CBP bought bulk cellphone location data harvested from apps. [A-000105]

  Clearview AI holds contracts with over 3,000 agencies and claims 10 billion scraped images, against roughly 640 million in the FBI’s own database, [A-000106] and GAO found five federal agencies using facial recognition to determine whether a person is present at a location. [A-000107]

• Communications are queried in the millions. The FBI ran more than 3.3 million warrantless searches of Americans’ communications in a single year under an authority nominally limited to foreigners abroad. [A-000108] Reported numbers have fallen sharply since, though the totals are incomplete and the FISA Court found the undercounting ongoing in March 2026.[N-000109]

• None of current government surveillance was built to support an identity card. It was done for national security and/or public safety. Roughly 119,000 license plate reader cameras operate nationwide, capturing plate, location, and time, retaining the data to track movement, and comparing it against watch lists.[A-000073, N-000097]

• The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act limits DMV personal information to fourteen permissible uses, sets penalties, and makes violators civilly liable to the individual. [A-000071] It is a federal floor - states may be stricter[N-000095] - and the courts enforce it in both directions.[A-000072]

• The interstate sharing this claim would rely on already exists under REAL ID.[N-000085]

The objections:

• Restrictions get violated. Officers have used license plate reader access to stalk former partners and surveil protestors, and a New York Inspector General investigation found DMV employees improperly accessing motor-vehicle records in breach of both federal law and department policy.[D-000087]

• Limits erode. The Social Security number was created in 1935 to identify covered earnings and became a universal identifier across government, credit bureaus, hospitals, and schools.[D-000086]

• The restrictions are narrow in reach. The DPPA’s permissible uses include a broad grant to any government agency carrying out its functions,[N-000096] and the framework ODNI released in 2024 restricts no category of data agencies may purchase, including location and web browsing.[D-000112] The DPPA covers motor-vehicle records. Nothing comparable covers what agencies buy.

• Facial recognition produces ranked probability scores that fail, but is not part of this claim. At least eight Americans have been wrongfully arrested on facial recognition matches with no corroborating evidence, seven of the eight were Black.[N-000110] Detroit’s police chief acknowledged his department’s system was wrong 96 percent of the time as a sole identifier, and the department kept using it.[D-000111]

Options:

• Give the individual a right of action, as the DPPA does.[A-000071] Enforcement that depends only on an agency policing itself is the pattern that already failed.

• Require access logging that the individual can inspect - the person can see who looked at their record and why. However, current laws probably limit these logs and the reasons why records were reviewed.

• Give law enforcement a reliable tool and require its use. Confirming identity is part of the job, and this credential exists in part to make that possible. The wrongful arrests went wrong not because police checked identity, but because a facial recognition match was treated as the sole test for identification.

Federal guidance already holds such matches are investigative leads requiring verification. The statute should require that where identity matters, it be confirmed against the credential rather than inferred from a probabilistic match.

Summary of SC-5: Surveillance the public fears is already happening, confirmed by the government itself.[A-000103, A-000104] Location data bought without warrants,[A-000105] facial recognition at ten billion images,[A-000106] millions of warrantless queries of Americans’ communications.[A-000108]

None of it was built on an identity credential, and none of it is governed by anything as strong as the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.

• What government holds today is bought, scraped, and uncertain. Restrictions on identity data have been broken before.[D-000087]

Against that background, this claim adds a better index with possibly better guardrails rather than a new power.

In contrast, a verified credential is exact, and precision makes a large system more accurate and valuable for national security and public safety.

• The law must be written with a closed list of uses, a private right of action, inspectable logs, regular reporting, and a process for accountability. Consequences are not defined as part of this claim’s Q4 | Solution.

SC-6 | The cost and effort are justified.

What the cost side shows:

• Contemporary estimates of a national identity system ranged from $4 billion at minimum to $25-30 billion to establish, plus $3-6 billion a year to operate.[D-000088] A separate estimate put REAL ID implementation at roughly $17 billion, with states bearing the majority.[D-000089]

  Both figures come from organizations opposed to the proposal. We have found no independent or official cost study of a universal requirement built on existing systems.

• The federal agency that would confirm citizenship is already strained. Passport processing ran more than four weeks longer than pre-pandemic in Fiscal Year 2023, driven by record volume and staff shortages, with more than 250,000 hours of overtime,[D-000133] and its modernization plan had defined milestones for 24 of 83 projects as of December 2024.[D-000134] It issued more than 27 million passports in Fiscal Year 2025, its highest year.[N-000136]

• For the individual, the cost is $54 on average for the card,[D-000081] and $75 to $175 total including travel and other possible costs.[D-000032]

What the benefit side shows:

• Lacking a compliant credential already carries a price: TSA charges $45 to a traveler who arrives without acceptable identification.[A-000084] That fee exists because handling a missing or false credential costs money, and the person responsible for the violation is required to pay for it.

• Against those costs sit $12.5 billion in reported fraud losses in one year,[N-000101] and $27.3 billion in estimated identity fraud losses in another.[A-000074] What no source establishes is how much of that a required universal credential would stop. This is noted in the summary of this section.

Options:

• Consider a five-year national effort to update people’s identification in our government systems to remove duplicates, update data to optimum accuracy, add fingerprint and iris scans, and thwart crime.

A national effort at this scale is not unprecedented. More than three million men served in the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1942, the largest peacetime mobilization in American history, with the Department of Labor recruiting, the Army running camps, and each state enrolling under a population quota.[A-000129, A-000130] The recruiting conditions today are not the same as then, during the Depression when unemployment was near 25 percent.

These people and the technology to support them could supplement state motor vehicle staff to serve people through this new identification process for a five year period. The goal is all Americans and approved visitors have completed the process within that timeframe.

Summary of SC-6:

We cannot validate:

• An unbiased estimate of the cost of this claim because currently the only estimate has been made by its opponents.

• The full benefits because current numbers are not limited to the specific problems the credential would address.

• We have confirmed:

• The infrastructure this claim needs already exists and is paid for (SC-7). The marginal cost of a universal requirement is not the cost of building a system. It is the cost of extending one. That is a materially smaller number than the estimates describe,[D-000088] and nobody has calculated it.

• There is an unknown cost for new technology to support the requirements of this claim, and a five year term of temporary staffing to have people complete their initial enrollment.

SC-7 | It can be implemented fairly and uniformly, and the process already exists in multiple states.

It is already built:

• Every state, the District of Columbia, and the five territories issue REAL ID-compliant credentials, certified by DHS.[N-000093]

• The Enhanced Driver’s License has provided federally recognized proof of identity and citizenship since 2009 in five states. In Washington alone 2.26 million people hold one, a third of that state’s cardholders,[A-000127] and the state absorbed 168,000 original applications in a single quarter of 2025 - a 148 percent increase - at about five extra minutes per transaction.[A-000128]

• The national fingerprint index has operated since 1983,[A-000075] and DHS operates a biometric repository of more than 320 million identities alongside it.[A-000140, A-000141]

• REAL ID compliance climbed from 81 percent to above 94 percent in months once enforcement began.[A-000070]

The limits:

• Twenty years elapsed between enactment of REAL ID and enforcement, across repeated extensions.[N-000094] Whatever schedule is the goal, the real one could be longer. It depends on budget and management.

• Implementation met sustained multi-state resistance, and states bore most of the cost. [D-000089]

• States are legislating in opposite directions on the same credential: Nineteen issue them to illegal immigrants,[N-000118] and three have passed laws refusing to recognize those credentials from other states.[D-000121]

• The two-proofs-of-residence requirement excludes people without an address as written.[D-000082] One design choice, an entire population shut out.

• Maine prohibits by statute the use of biometric technology to produce identification documents.[D-000145]

• Two attempts to add a sixth citizenship-confirming state have failed: California’s legislature passed a bill that was vetoed over the tracking risk, and Ohio enacted a law and issued no cards.[D-000132] Each state that does issue one negotiates its own federal agreement, separately audited and separately designated.[N-000137]

• The Supreme Court has ruled the Constitution limits what can be required of a state in the areas of the Fugitive Slave Act (1842), radioactive waste (1992), handgun background checks (1997), and sports gambling (2018).[N-000147]

The Supreme Court has held that Congress cannot compel a state to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program, or reach the same result by directing the state’s own officers - and it added that no case-by-case weighing of burdens or benefits is necessary.[D-000146]

However, the Supreme Court has not ruled on this question where national security or foreign affairs is the federal interest.[N-000147]

Summary of SC-7: The systems exist, are national, and have already absorbed a universal-scale rollout.[N-000093, A-000070, A-000127] Feasibility is not the obstacle. Two other things are.

• The schedule. Twenty years passed between enactment and enforcement of the current REAL ID standard.[N-000094]

• The mechanism. This claim may need Supreme Court review.

What remains open is the path the current standard already used.

• Federal law may preempt state regulation and may condition a state’s ability to regulate on conformity with federal standards.[A-000148]

• Federal authority is strongest where foreign affairs and naturalization are concerned, and a state may not contradict a federal determination of status.[A-000149]

• REAL ID compelled no state and still reached 94 percent compliance,[A-000070] because the requirement fell on the person, not the state.

A state may decline to participate. Its credentials then do not satisfy the federal standard, and its residents must still obtain one under federal law - the requirement of this claim can still reach every adult. Q4 | Solution must be written that way.

IV. Common Scenarios

• You already have a REAL ID. Nothing changes until renewal, when the credential would record citizenship status as well as identity. This is most adults in America - more than 94 percent of travelers already carry a compliant document.[A-000070]

• You already have a passport. The expensive step is done - the federal government has already determined you are a citizen. What remains is biometric enrollment, because U.S. passports record no fingerprints.[N-000135]

• You have never held identification. You need a birth certificate to apply, and in some places, you need a photo ID to get the birth certificate.[D-000083] The cost is the one established under SC-4: $54 for the card, $75 to $175 all in.

  Cost to the person: Real, and front-loaded. Cost to the state: Fee waivers and one-time enrollment support for those who meet a standard of need. Costs can be offset by higher driver’s license fees or other state fees.

• You have no address. The federal standard requires two proofs of principal residence.[D-000082] As written, you cannot comply. This is not a burden that money alone fixes; it requires a different rule. A solution also increases the need for biometric identity confirmation.

  Cost to the person: Total exclusion, absent a change in the law. Cost to the state: An alternative verification path, which several states already operate for other purposes.

• Your card expires. A duty to maintain implies a moment of non-compliance. What follows from that moment is a Q4 | Solution question, and this claim proposes consequences only for failure to maintain - not police procedure. Q1 | Meaning, Section VI states that boundary.

• You are here on a visa and stay past ninety days. You cross the threshold in Q1 | Meaning, Section V and must obtain an American credential recording your status and its term. DHS recorded 538,548 overstay events in one year,[N-000100] so this scenario is not rare.

• You are already enrolled twice. Some people are, innocently and otherwise. Resolving those cases is more straightforward when there is a process in law for biometric confirmation of identity (Section II).

• Your state refuses to participate. One state already prohibits biometric identification by statute.[D-000145] Its credentials would not satisfy the federal standard, and its residents would obtain a federal credential instead. The state is not compelled and its residents are not excluded.

V. Who Feels This Law

VI. Impact Conclusion

• Here is our conclusion regarding the impact should this claim become law:

• It is reasonable to expect meaningful improvement in national security and public safety from enacting this claim, especially as technology advances. However, we could not find an estimate of how great the benefits may be.

• There is a significant cost for new technology and staffing to implement this claim as an upgrade to the REAL ID or EDL system, or a pairing of two systems, such as REAL ID and passports. We could not find an estimate based on how this claim is written.

• A person without an address cannot satisfy the two-proofs-of-residence requirement as written.[D-000082] This requires a solution, or solution options for states to choose.

• Implementation details of this claim, including cost and timeframe, are dependent on the federal system or systems chosen to update.

• There are two possible legal paths for implementation of this claim: (1) Federal mandate to states, which the Supreme Court’s rulings appear to foreclose, though no case establishing that rule has involved national security or foreign policy;[D-000146, N-000147] or (2) Federal mandate to citizens, the path the current standards have already used.[A-000148]

• This claim does not change what government may collect or how it may use it. However, the claim, in its final form as law, is an opportunity for citizens to specify reasonable limits, reporting, and accountability that protect rights while enabling national security and domestic law enforcement to do their jobs.

We encourage you to consider our proposed Q4 | Solution.

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution ┃Summary

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution┃Summary

What Is Best for the Common Good?

Evidence is noted in [ ]

I. Recap

Q1 | MEANING

This claim proposes a two-factor law of election administration: Before casting a ballot, every voter must (1) present a government-issued photo ID and (2) provide a signature that officials verify against the voter’s registration record. It covers the moment of voting - in person and by mail - and it is stricter than any current state law.

Q2 | EVIDENCE

Our registry holds 62 facts: 15 affirming, 18 dissenting, and 29 neutral. Every fact links to its end source so you can check it yourself. For each fact we verified two things: (1) Its lane, and that the source actually states what we summarize. (2) How much weight each fact deserves is the reader’s judgment - and our conclusions are in Q3 and Q4.

Q3 | IMPACT

The six sub-claim results, in one line each:

• SC-1 Fraud happens - rare, but it can decide a close race.

• SC-2 Safeguards are uneven state to state, and technology is making them weaker.

• SC-3 The fix’s measured effect is modest; signature checks on mail ballots work best.

• SC-4 The burden on honest voters is real, lands on specific groups, and can mostly be designed away.

• SC-5 Public support is high and repeated; costs run in the millions per state.

• SC-6 Fair versions already exist; only states or Congress can enact it.

UNKNOWNS

Answered by research since our first draft:

1. What these programs cost states to run - largely resolved by other states’ records.[N-28, N-29] Modern cost data is still thin - the records we have put costs in the single-digit to low-double-digit millions per state.

2. Whether passing the law raises public trust - research finds it has not, by itself.[D-18] Our answer: Build measurement into the law (see Section 10 of the draft law).

Still open:

1. No American election has ever tested the two checks together - photo ID plus signature.

2. Real counts of who has ID - every number we have is a survey estimate or one state’s court count.

3. How accurate signature checking is at the polls - today’s data covers mail ballots only.

4. Whether these requirements scare off would-be cheaters before they try - the big study measured caught fraud, not prevented fraud.

II. Solution

OBJECTIVE: What’s best for the common good?

America belongs to all of its citizens. Whatever your origin, faith, party, or politics - if you are an eligible American citizen, your vote is your equal share in this country, and this claim exists to protect that share.

Think of a home that every citizen co-owns. When decisions are made about that home, every co-owner gets a vote - and confirming that the person at the table is actually a co-owner takes nothing from any of them. It protects each owner’s equal share from being decided by someone who owns no part of the home at all.

The Supreme Court long ago called the vote ‘preservative of all rights’ - the one right that protects every other. We agree, and we add what the Court’s cases assume: Voting is not only the most important right of American citizens; it is also our most important responsibility.

Protecting the right and honoring the responsibility are the same work. Every safeguard in this claim exists for both reasons at once: So every eligible citizen can vote, and no ineligible vote cancels one. (Evidence N-30 | SC-5, and Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/356/)

Americans need to be confident our elections are fair, the vote count is accurate, and only citizens with the right to vote can participate.

1. Requiring photo ID and a signature match when voting is reasonable because it is consistent with other activities in our society, such as purchasing liquor and boarding a commercial flight.

2. Some will note that voting is a right, while those activities are not. True - the right belongs to every eligible citizen. That is why identity must be confirmed: To make sure it is the citizen, and not an impostor, who exercises it.

3. If ID is required for less important activities, then full confirmation of identity at the time of voting - our most important civic act - is more than validated.

The facts support that the financial and time burden for virtually all Americans is low, and there are cost-effective ways to help those with a true need for assistance to meet this requirement.

Our verdict: The facts support this claim. It should become law - with the safeguards below built into it.

WHAT THE LAW MUST INCLUDE

The evidence dictates how this law must be written. Every requirement below comes from the record, and each points to the section of the draft law that delivers it:

1. A free photo ID for anyone who needs one - courts upheld the laws that included it and struck down the one that charged a fee.[A-10, D-14, A-11] (Section 6, 9)

2. No eligible voter turned away - a provisional ballot and a fix-it window for anyone who forgets or lacks ID.[N-7, N-8, N-6] (Section 5)

3. Help those with true needs with the hidden costs - the documents, travel, and time that make a “free” ID cost $75 to $175.[D-17, D-14] (Section 6)

4. Accept tribal IDs as issued - one design mistake shut out an entire community.[D-13] (Section 6)

5. Over-communicate to voters - North Carolina proved a law can keep scaring voters away even after it is gone, if nobody tells them.[D-9] (Section 7)

6. Signature safeguards - allow up to three active reference signatures on file, AI - and if needed - human review before any rejection, and prompt notice with a chance to fix it, because signatures change with age and illness.[N-25, N-6, D-16] (Section 8)

7. Funding that never touches the voter - free IDs paid for by a modest driver’s license fee increase, with budgets adjusted for inflation.[N-28, N-29, D-14] (Section 9)

8. Proof it works - built-in public reporting and confidence measurement, because research shows passing the law does not raise trust by itself.[D-18] (Section 10)

9. Enacted the only legal way - by state legislatures for their elections, and by Congress for federal elections - ideally in harmony for the common good. Never by executive order.[N-10, N-19, N-24] (Section 11)

III. The Draft Law

THE VOTER VERIFICATION ACT

Section 1 - Name. This law may be called the Voter Verification Act.

Section 2 - Why This Law Exists. The enacting body finds that:

1. Confirmed voter fraud is rare, but in a close election even a small amount can change the result, and at least one congressional election has been overturned for ballot fraud.

2. The rules for verifying voters differ in every state, and technology is making identity fraud cheaper and easier every year.

3. Large majorities of Americans, across both parties, support requiring photo ID to vote.

4. Courts have upheld photo ID laws when the ID is free and voters can fix mistakes - and struck them down when they cost money.

5. The burden of this law falls hardest on specific groups of honest voters, so the protections in this law are not optional extras - they are the reason it is fair.

Section 3 - Definitions. In this law:

1. “Photo ID” means a current identification card issued by a federal, state, or tribal government that shows the voter’s photograph. Examples include driver’s licenses, passports, and IDs issued by federally recognized tribes, accepted as issued - including those showing a post office box where homes have no street address.

2. “Signature verification” means comparing the voter’s signature to the signatures on file in the voter’s registration record.

3. “Cure period” means the ten days following election day; the voter is given this grace period to resolve their ID or signature problem with their local election officials.

Section 4 - What Voters Do at the Polls. To receive a regular ballot, a voter:

1. Presents a current government-issued photo ID; and

2. Signs the poll record; and

3. Technology confirms the photo ID and signature; if either is rejected, a trained election official reviews to make the final decision.

Section 5 - No Eligible Voter Turned Away. A voter who cannot meet Section 4 votes a provisional ballot. The ballot counts if the voter presents ID and confirms their signature within the cure period, in person at a government voter-registration office or a state mobile unit staffed by government employees. Election officials must tell the voter, before leaving the polling place, exactly how and where to cure.

Section 6 - Free ID for Anyone Who Needs One. The state shall provide the following free services to residents who meet their financial standard of need:

1. Documents to verify a resident’s citizenship, such as birth certificates;

2. Reasonable number of mobile ID units , staffed by government employees, serving communities far from voter registration offices to meet with citizens closer to their homes; and

3. Accept current IDs issued by federally recognized tribes.

Section 7 - Telling the Voters. Before the first election under this law, the state shall run a statewide education program and send direct, individual notice to every registered voter who has no ID on file. If any part of this law is later changed or suspended, the state shall notify those same voters again.

Section 8 - Signature Rules. Signature verification under this law requires:

1. Up to three active reference signatures on file for each voter, verified at a state-designated election registrar location;

2. Multiple signatures may be provided by a voter whose signatures have changed from age, disability, or illness - in advance of an election - at a state-designated election registrar location, and maintained on their record thereafter;

3. Review of signature and photo ID by election software that may include AI, and if rejected, then by a trained election official - no rejection by technology alone; and

4. Prompt notice and a cure opportunity for every rejection at the time of rejection - up to ten days past an election day.

Section 9 - Who Pays. No voter shall ever be charged for a government-issued photo ID. No voter who meets a state’s qualification of financial need shall pay for the documents this law requires to obtain a government-issued photo ID. Free IDs and the programs in Sections 6 and 7 are funded by a modest increase in the standard driver’s license fee, with appropriations adjusted for inflation each year.

Section 10 - Proof It Works. Election results are already public record. After every general election, the state shall also publish: The number of provisional ballots, cure rates, and signature rejections by county; and, within 90 days of the election, the results of an independent survey of public confidence in elections. The people deserve to see whether this law delivers.

Section 11 - Who Implements, and When. The chief election official and the motor-vehicle agency implement this law together. It takes effect at the first regularly scheduled general election held at least one year after enactment.

Section 12 - Laws This One Replaces. The enacting body shall list the laws and bureaucratic rules that become unnecessary when this law passes, and repeal them.

Section 13 - If a Court Strikes Part. If any part of this law is held invalid, the rest remains in effect.

IV. Implementation

Simple Liberty Foundation is an educational organization. We research, publish, and teach. We do not lobby or endorse candidates. This research is a first step in public education on this claim. The next steps are:

1. Engage with individuals - Simple Liberty Members and others - in civil dialog on the facts of this Claim, to sharpen the key details.

2. Study and engage with organizations that came before us with similar proposals to further consider their research and results.

3. Publish, as education for the people and their representatives:

   1. The model law above, refined by what we learn;

   2. A constitutional analysis - how federal and state responsibilities align best for the common good;

   3. What the law specifically requires, who implements it, and on what schedule; and

   4. A list of laws that become unnecessary - and can be repealed - if it passes.

Whether to act on this education belongs where it always has: With the people and those they elect. Therefore, once this process is complete, the people must drive change with their elected representatives.

V. Status

In public discussion. (July 2026)

VI. Solution Dependencies

This claim checks a voter’s identity at the moment of voting. Other claims must update our laws for full election integrity to be achieved. Three closely relate to this claim:

1. Accurate voter rolls must be maintained. About one in eight voter registrations is wrong. Often it is simply outdated or a duplicate,[A-8] but it can also be an ineligible voter. And the system of confirming citizenship and voting rights at state DMVs and other registrars is flawed - it can be subject to bribes and other corruption, resulting in registering aliens as American citizens. The process of registering citizens and voters must be improved to maintain public safety and trust in our election process. This claim will be researched by our team as Claim #04-003-004 under the topic of Election Integrity.

2. All voters should be required to re-register to vote. New Jersey showed why: A software error put 6,600 noncitizens on the voter rolls, about 400 of them voted, and the error stayed hidden for up to three years.[N-26] Re-registering with a current ID clears out old errors and fraud in one step and renews the integrity of our voter data. This claim will be researched by our team as Claim #04-003-005 under the topic of Election Integrity (to confirm ineligible, duplicate, and deceased registrants are removed).

3. At all times, citizens must have a real, current, government-issued photo ID. Millions of adults may lack one, based on survey estimates.[D-3] Meanwhile, fake IDs have become cheap[A-13] and AI is making identity fraud easier.[A-14] This is primarily a national security and citizenship issue - and is not driven to increase government’s ability for citizen surveillance. This claim will be researched by our team as Claim #01-004-001 under the topic of Citizenship.

How they combine for the common good:

1. The process of confirming citizenship and voter registration is flawed. As digital and AI fraud grows, it must be strengthened while reasonably achieving a balance of accuracy, efficiency, and simplicity.

2. Re-registering with a current ID clears out the fraud and renews integrity to our voter data.

3. Maintaining a current ID is logical, reasonable, and important for public safety. It is also consistent with laws to show current ID when purchasing liquor, flying on commercial airlines, and other activities.

These pending claims address real needs and have the potential to significantly simplify and increase trust in our election process. We will give each its own full review.

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution┃Summary

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution┃Summary

Who And What Does This Claim Impact?

Evidence is noted in [ ]

I. Introduction

Q1 | Meaning explained what this claim means. Q2 | Evidence listed the facts. Below we explore what happens if the claim becomes law - who and what are affected, and how much. Our proposed solution is provided in Q4 | Solution.

We run every claim through four tests to consider its impact:

1. Who and What are affected?

2. How Big is it, based on the evidence?

3. Options: What can be done to limit the negatives and increase the positives?

4. Projections: What happens over time?

NOTE: Evidence is referenced in [] - e.g., Evidence A-8 is listed as [A-8] and can be found on the Evidence page.

We trust evidence in this order:

1. Laws and court records

2. Official records and audits

3. Peer-reviewed studies

4. Surveys – estimates, not counts (see “Is That a Fact?”)

5. Claims from advocacy groups

II. Solution Dependencies: What This Claim Needs to Work

This claim checks a voter’s identity at the moment of voting. There are other claims to update our laws for full election integrity to be achieved. Three closely relate to this claim of requiring government-issued photo ID and signature verification when voting:

1. Accurate voter rolls must be maintained. About one in eight voter registrations is wrong. Often it is simply outdated or a duplicate [A-8], but it can also be an ineligible voter.

   1. The scale is national: State rolls carry more than 211 million names, while only about 174 million Americans say they are registered - a spread of some 37 million.[N-31]

   2. The system of confirming citizenship and voting rights at state DMV or other registrars is flawed - it can be subject to bribes and other corruption, resulting in registering aliens as American citizens.

   3. The process of registering citizens and voters must be improved to maintain public safety and trust in our election process. This claim will be researched by our team as Claim #04-003-004 under the topic of Election Integrity.

2. All voters should be required to re-register to vote. There is clear evidence that the use of fake IDs and AI to commit fraud is increasing, and there is voting by non-citizens.

   1. To restore faith in our election process - that only qualified citizens are voting - all voters should be required to re-register. This claim will be researched by our team as Claim #04-003-005 under the topic of Election Integrity (to confirm ineligible, duplicate, and deceased registrants are removed).

3. At all times, citizens must have a real, current, government-issued photo ID. Millions of adults may lack one, based on survey estimates.[D-3] Meanwhile, fake IDs have become cheap[A-13] and AI is making identity fraud easier.[A-14].

   1. This is primarily a national security and citizenship issue - and is not driven to increase government’s ability for citizen surveillance. This claim will be researched by our team as Claim #01-004-001 under the topic of Citizenship.

How they combine for the common good:

1. The process of confirming citizenship and voter registration is flawed. As digital and AI fraud grows, it must be strengthened while reasonably achieving a balance of accuracy, efficiency, and simplicity.

2. Re-registering with a current ID clears out the fraud and renews integrity to our voter data. Cleaning the rolls also cuts costs: Every mailing and notice program otherwise pays to reach tens of millions of names that should not be there.

3. Maintaining a current ID is logical, reasonable, and important for public safety. It is also consistent with laws to show current ID when purchasing liquor, flying on commercial airlines, getting a driver’s license, and other activities.

These pending claims address real needs and have the potential to significantly simplify and increase trust in our election process. We will give each its own full review.

III. Testing Each Sub-Claim

SC-1 | Preventable fraud occurs, is likely undercounted, and could affect the outcome of a close election.

Fraud is real:

1. More than 1,400 cases ended in convictions or other official findings.[A-1]

2. One congressional election was thrown out over an absentee-ballot scheme.[A-3]

3. A man forged his dead wife’s signature on a mail-ballot request – the signature check caught him.[A-4]

4. A voter allowed to vote without ID turned out to be fraudulently registered.[A-5]

5. 1982 Chicago: An estimated 100,000 fraudulent ballots; 63 people convicted.[A-7]

But it is rare:

1. The same database holds only about 10 cases of someone pretending to be another voter at the polls - out of billions of votes.[D-1]

2. It holds 41 noncitizen voting cases over about 50 years.[D-2]

3. Georgia’s audit: 20 noncitizen registrations, 9 votes, out of 8.2 million voters.[N-20] Utah: 1 and 0, out of 2 million.[N-21] Ohio: 521 flagged, 1 charged.[N-23]

What we found. Fraud is real - it has even flipped an election.[A-3] Some surely goes uncaught; the database’s own authors say they only count what was caught.[A-2] But when states searched hard, they found very little.[N-20, N-21, N-23]

Conclusion: Election fraud is rare, but in a close election, even a little can decide it. The Supreme Court said the same.[A-6]

SC-2 | Current safeguards are insufficient, and digital technologies including AI are making them more so.

The rules are uneven:

1. 36 states ask for some ID; 14 ask for none.[N-1]

2. 32 states check mail-ballot signatures; 10 plus DC only check that the envelope was signed.[N-2, N-3]

3. No-ID states rely on a signature and the voter stating their name and address.[N-4] Federal law covers only certain first-time voters.[N-9]

4. Registration runs on the honor system – you swear you are a citizen, and that is it.[A-9] The rolls have many errors.[A-8]

5. Even the nation’s two official counts of registered voters disagree - about 174 million by survey, over 211 million on state rolls.[N-31]

And the safeguards are getting weaker:

1. $15 fake IDs fooled a company’s automated ID check.[A-13]

2. The government warns that AI-made fake documents are fooling banks.[A-14]

What we found. Two problems: (1) The safeguards are uneven, and they are getting weaker as technology improves; and (2) Whatever the fraud rate is today, cheating is getting easier and cheaper.

SC-3 | Requiring photo ID and signature verification will reduce ineligible voting.

What supports it:

1. Signature checking caught a forged mail ballot before it counted – the clearest proof that verification works.[A-4]

2. A bipartisan commission led by Jimmy Carter and James Baker recommended photo ID paired with free IDs.[A-11]

3. The systems needed to check voters already exist and run every election.[N-2, N-5, N-25]

The hard part:

1. The biggest national study found strict ID laws had no measurable effect on turnout - and no measurable effect on fraud either.[A-15]

What we found. The measured proof that this law would reduce illegal voting may be modest, but no state currently requires both government-issued photo ID and signature verification - so no data exists. Also, we did not investigate the depth and reliability of signature verification systems. These systems may or may not need improvement.

The strongest proven tool is the signature check on mail ballots.[A-4, N-2] This sub-claim leans mostly on SC-1 (rare fraud can flip close races) and SC-2 (cheating is getting easier) - on prevention and public trust - more than on measured results. Our Q4 | Solution must weigh that.

SC-4 | Eligible voters would not be wrongly blocked.

Who could be blocked:

1. A survey estimates over 49 million adults lack a current, unexpired license with their current name and address[D-3] (survey estimate, n=2,386, weighted).

2. A court counted 608,470 registered Texas voters – 4.5% – without qualifying ID under one strict law.[D-6]

3. Those without ID are more often elderly, low-income, minority, or student voters.[D-4, D-5, D-10–D-12]

4. North Dakota’s street-address rule shut out tribal IDs that list PO boxes.[D-13]

5. Some studies found turnout dropped 2–3 points after strict laws.[D-7, D-8] In North Carolina, voters without ID kept staying home even after the law was struck down – because nobody told them it was gone.[D-9]

6. Signatures change with age and illnesses like Parkinson’s – risking rejected ballots.[D-16]

On the other side:

1. The biggest national study found no turnout drop at all, for any racial group.[A-15]

2. The Supreme Court ruled Indiana’s law was not a heavy burden for most voters.[A-10]

Options:

1. Free IDs are now standard – courts push states to provide them. Indiana’s law survived because IDs were free;[A-10] Georgia’s survived only after a court called its fee an illegal poll tax.[D-14]

2. The Carter-Baker plan added outreach and mobile issuance for those who need help.[A-11]

3. Fix-it (“cure”) windows are written into the law,[N-7, N-8] and officials compare several signatures on file.[N-6, N-25]

4. Design rule learned the hard way: Accept tribal IDs as issued.[D-13]

5. If Companion Claim #3 passes, nearly everyone will already have an ID (Section II).

Projections - what is left:

1. The hidden costs a free ID does not fix - getting a birth certificate, travel, and time off work. That is what the poll-tax ruling was really about.[D-14]

2. Voters whose signatures have changed are only as protected as the fix-it process is good.[D-16, N-6]

3. Confusion. North Carolina proved a law can keep scaring voters away even after it is gone, if nobody tells them.[D-9] Clear communication changes the outcome.

What we found. There is a burden, but it is limited and can be overcome by targeted support for those with real need. For example, states can provide free IDs, fix-it steps, fair rules, and our Companion Claims help level the playing field.

It is illogical and unrealistic to claim 100% of eligible citizens will ever register to vote and vote in every election. Our Q4 | Solution focuses on what’s best for the common good.

SC-5 | The cost and effort are justified.

Public support is strong and repeated:

1. 84% support photo ID (Gallup).[N-11] 83% (Pew).[N-12] 77% called it “reasonable” - the actual word in Rasmussen’s question.[N-13]

2. Three polling companies, different methods, same answer, within months.

3. Voters in 15 states approved citizenship-voting measures, averaging 73% yes.[N-17]

The cost side:

1. One court struck down an ID fee as an illegal poll tax - so the ID must be free.[D-14] Only a small share of voters - roughly five percent or less - would ever need one provided.[D-3, D-6]

2. State records put implementation costs in the single-digit to low-double-digit millions per state.[N-28, N-29] Most figures are from 2005-2011, so modern cost data is thin (see Section VII).

3. Studies find no consistent link between strict ID laws and higher voter confidence.[D-18]

What we found. The public strongly believes this is reasonable. Other states’ records now give us a price range, though the figures are dated.[N-28, N-29] “Worth it” is a Q4 | Solution decision. Q3 | Impact’s finding: The support is solid; the cost is bounded but dated.

SC-6 | The requirement can be implemented fairly and uniformly.

It can be done fairly:

1. The Constitution gives this job to state legislatures and Congress.[N-10]

2. Indiana is the tested model: Photo ID, free IDs, a 10-day fix-it window - upheld by the Supreme Court.[N-7, N-8]

3. Even the leading opposition group supports “commonsense” ID rules, pointing to Rhode Island and Michigan as fair ones.[A-12]

The limits:

1. 36 different state systems today.[N-1]

2. Courts blocked the president’s attempt to change election rules alone,[N-19] and a promised national voter-ID order has been announced twice and never issued.[N-24]

3. A state court struck down New York City’s local overreach in the other direction.[N-16]

4. North Dakota shows how one small design choice can unfairly shut people out.[D-13]

What we found. Fair versions already exist - Indiana, Rhode Island, and Michigan prove it.[N-7, N-8, A-12] Making it the same everywhere is the hard part, and there are only two legal paths: State by state, or Congress. Not the president.[N-10, N-19, N-24]

Fairness requires an efficient system with boundaries - the system supports those who truly need it, not the irresponsible. Systems have succeeded when free IDs, fix-it steps, and reasonable inclusive rules were built in, and failed where they were not.[D-13, D-14]

IV. Common Scenarios

1. You forgot your ID. You vote a provisional ballot. It counts if you show your ID within the fix-it window - 10 days in Indiana.[N-7, N-8]

   1. The cost to the voter: A second trip. Longer windows and remote fixes make it easier.[N-6]. Who’s fault? The voter.

   2. The cost to the state: Minimal.

2. You do not have an ID at all. The ID itself can be free - courts push states to do that.[A-10, D-14, A-11] What is left: The citizen’s paperwork, the ride, and the time. If Companion Claim #3 passes, this problem goes away (Section II).

   1. The cost to the voter: Completed in advance of registering to vote or as part of it. Support systems can eliminate the cost for the truly destitute.

   2. The cost to the state: None - standard procedure.

3. You do not have a ride. Two different problems. (a) A ride to get and keep an ID - that is this law’s burden, and mobile ID vans can fix much of it.[A-11] (b) A ride to the polls on Election Day - that exists with or without this law, so it does not count against this claim.

   1. The cost to the voter: States can eliminate this cost for those with a true need.

   2. The cost to the state: Limited, but must have boundaries to avoid exploitation.

   3. Transportation based on need will be addressed separately under Claim #04-005-006.

4. You vote by mail. How ID and signatures get checked for absentee ballots is handled in a separate claim: Mail-in ballots must meet the same identity-verification standards as in-person voting (Claim #04-003-003).

   1. This claim covers in-person voting. Today’s mail baseline: 32 states check signatures; 10 plus DC only check the envelope.[N-2, N-3] Mail rejection-rate disparities[D-15] move to that claim.

V. Who Feels This Law - Group by Group

VI. Leftover Evidence

Every evidence entry is accounted for. The ones not used above have new homes:

1. D-15 (mail-ballot rejection disparities) - moves to Claim #04-003-003 (mail-ballot identity verification).

2. N-5 (states that require ID copies with mail ballots) – becomes Q4 | Solution design material.

3. N-14, N-15, N-16 (citizenship-voting rules) - stay as boundary markers in Q1 | Meaning Section XIII and seed Citizenship claims.

VII. What We Still Do Not Know

Answered by research since our first draft:

1. What these programs cost states to run - largely resolved by other states’ records.[N-28, N-29] Modern cost data is still thin.

2. Whether passing the law raises public trust - research finds it has not, by itself.[D-18] Our Q4 | Solution includes measuring it.

Still open:

1. No American election has ever tested the two checks together - photo ID plus signature.

2. Real counts of who has ID - every number we have is a survey estimate or one state’s court count.

3. How accurate signature checking is at the polls - today’s data on signature accuracy covers mail ballots only.

4. Whether these requirements scare off would-be cheaters before they try - the big study measured caught fraud, not prevented fraud.

VIII. Impact Summary

Voter fraud is real, and courts have proven it. Confirmed fraud is also rare - the actual total is unknown. The danger is that in a close election, even a small amount can change the result.

Meanwhile, the rules and processes for managing elections are different in every state, and technology is making it cheaper and easier to fake an identity every year.

Even the official counts of how many Americans are registered to vote disagree by tens of millions.

The fix this claim proposes - photo ID plus signature verification - is one that large majorities of Americans in both parties call reasonable. No state requires both checks today, so its full effect has never been measured.

The burden on honest voters is real but limited, and can be managed: IDs can be free, mistakes can be fixed, and fair rules can be written - several states have already proven it.

What remains falls on a small share of voters - and for them, clear communication matters as much as the details of the law itself.

Two questions have now been researched: (1) Program costs - other states’ records put them in the single-digit to low-double-digit millions per state; and (2) Public trust - studies find that passing ID laws has not, by itself, raised it. Our Q4 | Solution builds on the first and answers the second with measurement.

The table below sums up the findings for each sub-claim.

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution┃Summary

Why Is This Claim True?

Welcome!

This section is the factual registry for Claim #04-003-002. Its focus is facts, not arguments: Every entry states one verifiable fact in a single sentence, cites the end source - the statute, court record, database, study, or dataset where the fact terminates - and identifies the sub-claim(s) it bears on.

Arguments and interpretations remain in Q1 - Meaning (Sections IX–X) and Q3 - Impact, cited to the parties who make them; no opinion piece is cited here as if it were a fact.

The three lanes - Evidence is numbered as follows:

• A-# | Affirming - facts a proponent would introduce to support this claim.

• D-# | Dissenting - facts an opponent would introduce to discredit this claim.

• N-# | Neutral- statutes, court holdings, official counts, polls, and facts both sides might introduce because it can be considered as both affirming and dissenting.

Evidence numbering

• Evidence numbers are permanent in our system - once assigned, a number is never reused or reassigned. New facts take the next available number in their lane.

• Sources can be repeatable - one source may support multiple entries in any lane.

• Every fact must include a link to the source; a fact that cannot be traced to a primary source does not enter the registry.

• Sub-claim tags use SC-1 through SC-6, matching Q1 - Meaning (full), Section II.

Known gap - Published polling from typically trustworthy sources test the photo-ID component only. We have not identified a poll testing this claim’s proposal to implement a two-factor process of identity confirmation.

Sub-claim key

• SC-1 preventable fraud occurs, is likely undercounted, and could affect a close election.

• SC-2 current safeguards are insufficient, and advances in digital technologies – including AI – are making them more so.

• SC-3 the two-factor requirement will reduce ineligible voting.

• SC-4 eligible voters would not be wrongly blocked.

• SC-5 the cost and effort are justified.

• SC-6 it can be implemented fairly and uniformly.

DISCLAIMER

Listing evidence in one of these three lanes does not mean we endorse it as true. We verify two things: The lane - Affirming, Dissenting, Neutral - and that each source states the fact we summarize. Upon close inspection, you may find the evidence claimed is strong, mixed, or weak.

It would imply bias for us to exclude perspectives that claim a reasonable factual basis, so we include the full breadth. However, in reality, studies rest on assumptions that can be biased; surveys are estimates, not full counts; and people on all sides of an issue do research with the intent to prove themselves right.

Follow the links and judge the evidence for yourself. We provide our conclusions in the Q3 - Impact and Q4 - Solution sections of an issue.

Affirming Facts (A)

A-1 | SC-1 - The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database documented 1,412 proven instances of election fraud as of January 2023, each ending in a criminal conviction, civil finding, or overturned election, and the database has continued to grow since.

Source: Heritage Election Fraud Database, electionfraud.heritage.org (Jan. 2023 update).

Links:

https://electionfraud.heritage.org/

Search: https://electionfraud.heritage.org/search

1,412-case count: https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/election-fraud-database-tops-1400-cases

A-2 | SC-1, SC-2 - Heritage states its database is a sampling, not a comprehensive count, because it cannot include fraud that goes undetected or unprosecuted.

Source: “About the Election Fraud Database.”

Links: https://electionfraud.heritage.org/about

https://www.heritage.org/article/about-the-election-fraud-database

A-3 | SC-1 - The 2018 election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District was overturned and a new election ordered after a state investigation found an absentee-ballot trafficking operation run by political operative McCrae Dowless.

Source: North Carolina State Board of Elections order (Feb. 2019); Heritage database entry.

Links: Press release: https://www.ncsbe.gov/news/press-releases/2019/02/25/state-board-unanimously-orders-new-election-9th-congressional-district

Board order with findings: https://dl.ncsbe.gov/State_Board_Meeting_Docs/Congressional_District_9_Portal/Order_03132019.pdf

A-4 | SC-1, SC-3 - A Florida man forged his deceased wife’s signature on a mail-ballot request form and was charged with vote-by-mail fraud after election staff caught the fraud during a routine voter-roll check.

Source: Heritage database entry and underlying court record (2021).

Links: https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-man-mail-in-ballot-dead-wife-voter-fraud-charge

https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/florida-man-asked-for-mail-in-ballot-on-behalf-of-dead-wife-said-he-was-testing-if-voting-system-worked-deputies/

A-5 | SC-2 - A Minnesota voter who cast a ballot without identification - because an acquaintance vouched for her identity – later pleaded guilty to registering in more than one precinct.

Source: Heritage database entry and Minnesota court record.

Link: https://electionfraud.heritage.org/case/201659

Item 3 on Minnesota SOS Elections & Voting, Register on Election Day webpage: https://www.sos.mn.gov/elections-voting/register-to-vote/register-on-election-day/

A-6 | SC-1 - The Supreme Court in Crawford found the risk of voter fraud “real” and stated that it “could affect the outcome of a close election.”

Source: Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008).

Link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/553/181/

A-7 | SC-1 (historical) - A federal investigation of Chicago’s 1982 election estimated roughly 100,000 fraudulent ballots were cast, producing dozens of convictions.

Source: U.S. Attorney investigation records, cited in Heritage, “Voter Fraud.”

Link: Database case entry: https://electionfraud.heritage.org/case/200224

Full documentation with primary-source footnotes: https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/where-theres-smoke-theres-fire-100000-stolen-votes-chicago

Overview (63 convictions): https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/heritage-explains/voter-fraud

A-8 | SC-2 - A 2012 Pew study found approximately one in eight U.S. voter registrations was inaccurate, outdated, or duplicative, with about 1.8 million deceased individuals and nearly 3 million people registered in more than one state.

Source: Pew Center on the States, “Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient” (Feb. 2012).

Link: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2012/02/14/inaccurate-costly-and-inefficient-evidence-that-americas-voter-registration-system-needs-an-upgrade

A-9 | SC-2 - Voter registration relies on self-attestation of citizenship under penalty of perjury; election offices do not routinely verify citizenship against immigration databases at the point of registration.

Source: Bipartisan Policy Center, “Four Things to Know about Noncitizen Voting” (Feb. 2026).

Links: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/four-things-to-know-about-noncitizen-voting/

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 - https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-104publ208/pdf/PLAW-104publ208.pdf

NVRA of 1993 (DOJ) - the law requiring the citizenship attestation under penalty of perjury: https://www.justice.gov/crt/national-voter-registration-act-1993-nvra

USCIS SAVE agency search tool (documents the 23 states with SAVE agreements for citizenship verification): https://www.uscis.gov/save/about-save/save-agency-search-tool?type_of_agency%5B%5D=5&benefit_category%5B%5D=97&benefit_category%5B%5D=98&items_per_page=10

NCSL, “Legislative Approaches to Ensuring Only Citizens Vote” (jury-dismissal data as a verification source): https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/legislative-approaches-to-ensuring-only-citizens-vote

A-10 | SC-4, SC-5 - The Crawford Court held that the inconvenience of obtaining Indiana’s free photo ID did not impose a substantial burden on most voters’ right to vote.

Source: Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008).

Link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/553/181/

A-11 | SC-3, SC-6 - The bipartisan 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, recommended a uniform photo-ID requirement paired with free IDs and affirmative state outreach.

Source: Carter-Baker Commission, “Building Confidence in U.S. Elections” (Sept. 2005).

Links: Original 2005 report (archived): https://capitalresearch.org/app/uploads/baker-carter-commission-2005-election-doc.pdf

Background: https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/carter-baker-commission-16-years-later

A-12 | SC-6 - A 2016 Brennan Center report by Myrna Perez identified Rhode Island’s and Michigan’s voter ID laws as examples that increased security without disenfranchising eligible voters.

Source: Brennan Center, “Election Integrity: A Pro-Voter Agenda” (2016).

Links: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/election-integrity-pro-voter-agenda (Can view, but PDF is behind a Scribd paywall.)

Referenced at: https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/voting-reform/voter-id

A-13 | SC-2 - In February 2024, journalists documented an underground service, OnlyFake, selling realistic fake-ID images for $15 – advertised as neural-network generated at up to 20,000 documents per day – including a fabricated California driver’s license, complete with a signature, that passed the automated identity check of a major cryptocurrency exchange.

Source: 404 Media, “Inside the Underground Site Where ‘Neural Networks’ Churn Out Fake IDs” (Feb. 2024), 404media.co. (Later forensic analysis questioned how much AI the service actually used; the cost, speed, and successful verification bypass are documented regardless.)

Links: https://www.404media.co/inside-the-underground-site-where-ai-neural-networks-churns-out-fake-ids-onlyfake/

AI-claim: https://resistant.ai/blog/onlyfake-generative-ai-fraud

A-14 | SC-2 - The U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an alert in November 2024 reporting an increase in suspicious-activity filings describing deepfake media - including identity documents created or altered with generative AI – used to circumvent identity verification at financial institutions.

Source: FinCEN, Alert FIN-2024-Alert004 (Nov. 13, 2024), fincen.gov.

Links: Official alert PDF: https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/FinCEN-Alert-DeepFakes-Alert508FINAL.pdf

Press release: https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-issues-alert-fraud-schemes-involving-deepfake-media-targeting-financial

A-15 | SC-4 - A nationwide analysis of voter files from 2008–2018 found strict ID laws had no significant negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any racial group.

Source: Cantoni & Pons, “Strict ID Laws Don’t Stop Voters” (NBER Working Paper 25522, later published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics)

Link: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25522/w25522.pdf.

Dissenting Facts (D)

D-1 | SC-1 - A Brennan Center review of the Heritage database found only 10 cases of in-person impersonation at the polls – the fraud type polling-place photo ID addresses – across the billions of votes the database’s time span covers.

Source: Brennan Center, “Heritage Fraud Database: An Assessment” (2017).

Link: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/analysis-heritage-foundations-database-undermines-claims-recent-voter

D-2 | SC-1 - The same review (D-1) found 41 cases of noncitizens registering, voting, or attempting to vote over roughly five decades.

Source: Brennan Center, “Heritage Fraud Database: An Assessment” (2017).

Link: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/analysis-heritage-foundations-database-undermines-claims-recent-voter

D-3 | SC-4 - More than 49 million American adults do not possess an unexpired driver’s license bearing their current name and address.

Source: Brennan Center / University of Maryland CDCE national survey (2024), brennancenter.org. (Survey estimate, n=2,386, weighted.)

Links: Figure stated at: https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/voting-reform/voter-id

Survey data (Brennan/UMD CDCE, June 2024): https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Voter%20ID%202023%20survey%20Key%20Results%20June%202024%20updatev2.pdf

Weighted estimate from CDCE Survey data: https://cdce.umd.edu/feature/new-cdce-survey-shows-millions-lack-id-voter-id-laws-spread-more-states

D-4 | SC-4 - Approximately 11 percent of U.S. citizens in 2006 - about 21 million people - do not possess government-issued photo identification.

Source: Brennan Center survey, “Citizens Without Proof” (2006), cited in ACLU, “Oppose Voter ID Legislation – Fact Sheet.”

Links: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-without-proof

2006 Figures confirmed in 2011 post: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-without-proof-stands-strong

D-5 | SC-4 - The same survey found up to 25 percent of Black voting-age citizens lacked current government-issued photo ID, compared with about 8 percent of white voting-age citizens.

Source: Brennan Center, “Citizens Without Proof” (2006).

Links: New State Voting Laws: Barriers to the Ballot? (Sept. 28, 2011): https://brennancenter.org/analysis/new-state-voting-laws-barriers-ballot

2006 Figures confirmed in 2011 post: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-without-proof-stands-strong

D-6 | SC-4 - A federal court found that 608,470 registered Texas voters - approximately 4.5 percent - lacked identification qualifying under the state’s 2013 photo-ID law.

Source: Veasey v. Perry, 71 F. Supp. 3d 627 (S.D. Tex. 2014).

Links: https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914f18aadd7b0493497ba31

Finding recounted in GAO-14-634: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-14-634.pdf

D-7 | SC-4 - A Government Accountability Office study found turnout fell by an estimated two to three percentage points more in Kansas and Tennessee after those states adopted strict ID laws than in comparison states.

Source: GAO, “Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws,” GAO-14-634 (Sept. 2014).

Link: Footnote 101, page 70: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-14-634.pdf

D-8 | SC-4 - Strict voter ID laws taking effect after Crawford reduced presidential-election turnout by more than 2.5 percentage points, while laws passed earlier had negligible effects.

Source: Academic study in Brennan Center research compilation, “Research on Voter ID.” (Confirm author/journal at link before freeze.)

Link: Compilation with links to each underlying study: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/research-voter-id

D-9 | SC-4 - Stanford researchers found North Carolina’s strict ID law reduced turnout among voters lacking qualifying identification, and the effect persisted even after the law’s repeal.

Source: The Durable Differential Deterrent Effects of Strict Photo Identification Laws (Nov. 10, 2019). Published version of record (paywalled): Grimmer & Yoder, Political Science Research and Methods 10(3): 453–469 (2022), Cambridge Core

Link: Full text with methodology (Stanford Democracy & Polarization Lab): https://stanforddpl.org/papers/grimmer_yoder_2019_voterids/ or https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0qvfoisdch7yai6zoz8tq/voter_id_deter.pdf?rlkey=tkap0c10igy0jykmbhf5107vc&e=1&dl=0

D-10 | SC-4 - Texas voters who could vote only through the court-ordered Reasonable Impediment Declaration – lacking qualifying ID – were disproportionately Black and Latino.

Source: Jones, Cross & Granato, “The Texas Voter ID Law and the 2016 Election” (Apr. 2017).

Link: Full study PDF: https://www.uh.edu/hobby/voterid2016/voterid2016.pdf

D-11 | SC-4 - Administrative-records research in Michigan found voters of color were more likely than white voters to arrive at the polls without qualifying identification.

Source: Academic study in Brennan compilation (2022).

Link: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/research-voter-id

D-12 | SC-4 - In Rhode Island, turnout declined among citizens without driver’s licenses after the state’s ID law took effect, and minority citizens were considerably less likely to hold licenses.

Source: Administrative-records study in Brennan compilation (2022).

Link: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/research-voter-id

D-13 | SC-4, SC-6 - North Dakota’s requirement of a physical street address on qualifying ID excludes many tribal-land residents whose IDs list PO boxes.

Source: Brennan Center, “The Impact of Voter Suppression on Communities of Color” (2022); related federal litigation.

Link: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/impact-voter-suppression-communities-color

D-14 | SC-4, SC-5 - A Georgia federal court in October 2005 held the state’s photo-ID law an unconstitutional poll tax and undue burden, forcing the state to revise the law before a later version was upheld.

Source: Common Cause/Georgia v. Billups, 406 F. Supp. 2d 1326 (N.D. Ga. 2005).

Links: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/commong-cause-georgia-v-892777754

Ruling documented at: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/policy-brief-voter-identification

D-15 | SC-4 - Mail ballots cast by voters of color were rejected at higher rates than those of white voters in Georgia’s 2020 primary, with similar findings in Georgia’s and Florida’s 2018 general elections.

Source: Brennan Center research reports (2020); companion academic studies.

Link: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/impact-voter-suppression-communities-color

D-16 | SC-4 - Signatures change with age, injury, stroke, and conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, and some states require a physician’s attestation before accepting a ballot whose signature no longer matches the file.

Source: Michael J. Fox Foundation, “Know Your Rights: Voting by Mail and Signature Verification” (Oct. 2020).

Link: https://www.michaeljfox.org/news/know-your-rights-voting-mail-and-signature-verification

D-17 | SC-4, SC-5 - A Harvard Law School institute report calculated that obtaining a nominally free voter ID typically costs the individual $75 to $175 in underlying documents, travel, and time - between 7 and 136 times the inflation-adjusted poll tax outlawed in 1964.

Source: Richard Sobel, “The High Cost of ‘Free’ Photo Voter Identification Cards,” Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, Harvard Law School (2014).

Link: https://hls.harvard.edu/today/free-voter-ids-costly-harvard-law-report-finds

D-18 | SC-5 - Peer-reviewed research has found no consistent relationship between strict photo-ID laws and voter confidence: No correlation between ID requirements and beliefs about fraud frequency (2008), no evidence that passing strict ID laws reduced belief in fraud (2016), and no significant effect on citizens’ belief that elections were fair (2019) - with the strongest measured driver of confidence being whether the voter’s preferred candidate won.

Source: Ansolabehere & Persily, Harvard Law Review 121 (2008); Stewart, Ansolabehere & Persily, Stanford Law Review 68 (2016); Cantoni & Pons, NBER Working Paper 25522.

Links: https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/ansolabehere_persily.pdf

Stanford Law Review (2016): https://review.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/08/6_-_Persily_-_Stan._L._Rev.pdf

National study (NBER): https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25522/w25522.pdf

Summary (MIT Election Lab): https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voter-identification

Neutral Record (N)

N-1 | SC-2, SC-6 - As of October 2025, 36 states required identification at the polls – 24 of them photo ID, with exceptions – while 14 states generally required no ID on Election Day, and the 36 vary widely in accepted documents and no-ID procedures.

Source: Ballotpedia, “Voter identification laws by state” (Oct. 2025); Votebeat (Sept. 2025).

Links: https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_identification_laws_by_state

NCSL Voter ID report: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id

N-2 | SC-2, SC-3 - Thirty-two states conduct signature verification on returned absentee/mail ballots.

Source: NCSL, “Table 14: How States Verify Voted Absentee/Mail Ballots” (2025).

Link: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-14-how-states-verify-voted-absentee-mail-ballots

N-3 | SC-2 - Ten states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands verify only that the ballot envelope is signed, without comparing the signature to the file.

Source: NCSL, Table 14 (2025).

Link: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-14-how-states-verify-voted-absentee-mail-ballots

N-4 | SC-2 - States without documentary ID requirements typically have voters sign a poll roster, mandate comparison of those signatures against registration records, and verbally confirm name and address.

Source: NCSL, “Voter Verification Without ID Documents” (2025).

Link: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-verification-without-id-documents

N-5 | SC-3, SC-6 - Some states verify mail ballots by alternative methods – a copy of an identification document, a witness signature, or notarization – rather than signature comparison.

Source: NCSL, Table 14 (2025).

Link: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-14-how-states-verify-voted-absentee-mail-ballots

N-6 | SC-4, SC-6 - States with signature verification maintain cure processes allowing voters to correct a rejected signature, with windows and methods varying by state.

Source: NCSL, “Table 15: States with Signature Cure Processes” (2025).

Link: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-15-states-with-signature-cure-processes

N-7 | SC-6 - In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s strict photo-ID law in 2008, and the decision remains the controlling precedent for photo-ID statutes.

Source: 553 U.S. 181 (2008).

Link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/553/181/

N-8 | SC-4, SC-6 - Indiana’s law requires a government-issued photo ID whose name conforms to the registration record, provides free state IDs, and gives provisional voters ten days to present valid ID.

Source: Indiana Code; Indiana Secretary of State, in.gov/sos/elections.

Links: https://www.in.gov/sos/elections/voter-information/photo-id-law/

Statute confirmed in NCSL Voter ID report: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id

Ten-day cure rule in Crawford: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/553/181/

N-9 | SC-2 - The Help America Vote Act requires identification only from first-time voters who registered by mail, and accepts a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, or other government document as alternatives to photo ID.

Source: 52 U.S.C. § 21083 (HAVA § 303).

Link: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/21083

N-10 | SC-6 - The Elections Clause assigns the times, places, and manner of congressional elections to state legislatures subject to congressional override, and Article II assigns the manner of appointing presidential electors to state legislatures.

Source: U.S. Const. art. I, § 4; art. II, § 1.

Links: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-4/

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-2/section-1/

N-11 | SC-5 - Gallup found in October 2024 that 84 percent of U.S. adults favored requiring photo identification at the voting place, including 98 percent of Republicans, 84 percent of independents, and 67 percent of Democrats.

Source: Gallup (Oct. 2024). (Survey estimate, weighted.)

Link: https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-voting-voter-verification.aspx

N-12 | SC-5 - Pew Research Center found in August 2025 that 83 percent of U.S. adults favored requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.

Source: Pew Research Center (Aug. 2025). (Survey estimate, weighted.)

Link: Via fact brief linking the Pew data: https://gigafact.org/fact-briefs/voter-id-americans-support-wisconsin-poll-photo-identification/

Corroborating coverage: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/americans-support-photo-id-vote-democrats-oppose-save-america-act-rcna259549

N-13 | SC-5 - Rasmussen Reports found in January 2025 that 77 percent of likely voters called requiring photo ID to vote a reasonable election-integrity measure.

Source: Rasmussen Reports (Jan. 2025). (Survey estimate, n=1,229 likely voters, ±3 points, weighted.)

Link: https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration_second_term/election_integrity_77_favor_voter_id

Linked from: https://gigafact.org/fact-briefs/voter-id-americans-support-wisconsin-poll-photo-identification/

N-14 | SC-2 - Federal law since 1996 has explicitly prohibited noncitizens from voting in federal elections, with penalties including imprisonment and deportation.

Source: Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; 18 U.S.C. § 611.

Links: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/611

Official public law PDF, IIRIRA, Pub. L. 104-208 (fine and up to one year imprisonment): https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-104publ208/pdf/PLAW-104publ208.pdf

8 U.S.C. § 1182 - deportability/inadmissibility for unlawful voting and for falsely claiming citizenship: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182

N-15 | SC-2 - No state allows noncitizens to vote in statewide elections; the District of Columbia and certain municipalities in California, Maryland, and Vermont allow noncitizen voting in some local elections.

Source: Ballotpedia, “Laws permitting noncitizens to vote in the United States” (Mar. 2026); Bipartisan Policy Center (Feb. 2026).

Links: https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_permitting_noncitizens_to_vote_in_the_United_States

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/four-things-to-know-about-noncitizen-voting/

San Francisco school board voting: https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/09/noncitizen-voting-school-board-san-francisco/

Oakland Measure S (2022): https://ballotpedia.org/Oakland,_California,_Measure_S,_Noncitizen_Residents_Voting_Measure_(November_2022) - with implementation status: https://oaklandside.org/2024/11/01/measure-s-noncitizen-voting-oakland-school-board-election/

Maryland/Vermont municipalities (anchor-specific version of your existing Ballotpedia link): https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_permitting_noncitizens_to_vote_in_the_United_States#Details_about_noncitizen_voting_in_local_elections

DC Law 24-242 (the actual statute): https://code.dccouncil.gov/us/dc/council/laws/24-242

Separate-ballot safeguard in Maryland cities (NPR): https://www.npr.org/local/305/2022/11/09/1135568975/it-feels-very-welcoming-non-citizen-immigrants-on-voting-in-takoma-park

N-16 | SC-6 - New York City’s 2021 law extending local voting to noncitizens was struck down under the state constitution, a ruling the New York Court of Appeals affirmed 6–1 in March 2025.

Source: New York Court of Appeals decision (Mar. 2025); FindLaw (Mar. 2026).

Links: Fossella v. Adams (N.Y. Ct. App., Mar. 20, 2025) documented at: https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_permitting_noncitizens_to_vote_in_the_United_States

https://www.findlaw.com/voting/my-voting-guide/can-noncitizens-vote-in-the-united-states.html

The 2022 trial-court ruling that started it (CNN): https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/27/politics/noncitizen-voting-new-york/index.html - your entry’s fact is the 2025 Court of Appeals affirmance; this documents the lower-court stage.

N-17 | SC-5 - From 2018 through 2025, voters approved all 15 statewide constitutional amendments strengthening citizenship requirements for voting, averaging 73 percent support, and six more citizenship measures are on 2026 ballots, including Los Angeles’s November 2026 measure on local noncitizen voting.

Source: Ballotpedia News (July 2026); Spectrum News (June 2026).

Links: https://news.ballotpedia.org/2026/07/08/six-citizenship-voting-measures-on-the-ballot-in-2026-continue-historical-trend/

LA measure: https://spectrumlocalnews.com/ca/california/politics/2026/06/19/los-angeles-non-citizen-voting

N-18 | SC-6 - The SAVE Act, requiring documentary proof of citizenship at voter registration, passed the U.S. House and was pending in the Senate as of early 2026.

Source: Congress.gov, H.R. 22 (119th Congress).

Link: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22

N-19 | SC-4, SC-6 - A March 2025 executive order directed proof of citizenship on the federal registration form, listing passports and citizenship-designating IDs but not birth certificates as acceptable, while roughly half of Americans hold passports; nineteen states sued, courts blocked its major provisions during 2025, and in January 2026 a federal judge permanently blocked the order, finding the president lacks authority to unilaterally alter election procedures.

Source: Executive Order (Mar. 25, 2025); NBC News (Mar. 2025); TIME (Aug. 2025); NBC News (Feb. 2026); U.S. State Department passport data.

Links: Official text: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/28/2025-05523/preserving-and-protecting-the-integrity-of-american-elections

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/preserving-and-protecting-the-integrity-of-american-elections/

Litigation status (CRS): https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11368

Litigation history (19 states, 2025 injunctions): https://time.com/7313626/trump-voter-id-executive-order/

January 2026 permanent block: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/trump-vows-voter-id-requirements-midterms-rcna259018

N-20 | SC-1, SC-2 - Georgia’s October 2024 citizenship audit of 8.2 million registered voters identified 20 noncitizen registrations, of whom nine had voted, most before the state’s 2012 verification upgrade.

Source: Georgia Secretary of State announcement (Oct. 2024), via Bipartisan Policy Center.

Links: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/four-things-to-know-about-noncitizen-voting/

The Georgia Recorder report of Raffensperger’s announcement, with the 20-registered/9-voted figures: https://georgiarecorder.com/briefs/georgia-gop-secretary-of-state-reports-audit-found-20-noncitizens-registered-to-vote-out-of-8-2m/

N-21 | SC-1, SC-2 - Utah’s 2025–26 review of more than two million voter registrations found one confirmed noncitizen registration and zero noncitizen votes.

Source: Utah state review (Jan. 2026), via Bipartisan Policy Center.

Links: State of Utah Citizenship Review Process, January 22, 2026: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CNkU8qcrIQ-vYUaE4OyCBqydk5toZAR9/view

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/four-things-to-know-about-noncitizen-voting/

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/utah-reviewed-its-voter-rolls-for-noncitizens/

N-22 | SC-1 - A Bipartisan Policy Center review of the Heritage database identified 77 instances of noncitizens successfully casting ballots between 1999 and 2023.

Source: Bipartisan Policy Center, “Four Things to Know about Noncitizen Voting” (Feb. 2026).

Links: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/four-things-to-know-about-noncitizen-voting/

77 noncitizen voting instances: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=citizen&state=All&year=&case_type=All&fraud_type=All - NOTE: The article’s footnote 2 gives BPC’s full methodology (scraped Oct. 11, 2024; queries “citizen” and “alien”; manual review to 77)

N-23 | SC-1, SC-2 - Ohio’s Secretary of State flagged 521 potential noncitizen voting cases between 2019 and September 2023, but a journalistic review found only one resulted in a voter-fraud charge, with most flags traced to clerical errors and DMV lag in recording naturalizations.

Source: Ohio Capital Journal, “Ohio Sec. of State LaRose flagged more than 520 cases of noncitizen voter fraud. Only one was legit” (Sept. 27, 2023).

Link: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/09/27/ohio-sec-of-state-larose-flagged-more-than-520-cases-of-noncitizen-voter-fraud-only-one-was-legit/

N-24 | SC-6 - President Trump announced in August 2025 that he would sign an executive order requiring voter ID in all elections nationwide, and renewed the vow in February 2026 - “whether approved by Congress or not” - after the SAVE America Act passed the House; as of this writing, no such order has issued, and a federal court struck down the voter-ID portions of his earlier March 2025 election order as beyond presidential authority.

Source: Fox News (Aug. 30, 2025); Votebeat news analysis (Sept. 8, 2025); NBC News (Feb. 13, 2026).

Links: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-he-require-voter-id-executive-order

Implementation-complexity analysis: https://www.votebeat.org/2025/09/08/trump-executive-order-voter-id-requirement-emergency-power/

February renewal: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/trump-vows-voter-id-requirements-midterms-rcna259018

N-25 | SC-3, SC-6 - Election officials verifying signatures commonly compare the ballot signature against multiple signatures on file - the registration record, prior ballot envelopes, motor-vehicle transactions - so they can account for the evolution of a voter’s handwriting, and best practice pairs verification with prompt notification and a cure process when a signature is rejected.

Source: National Vote at Home Institute, “Increasing Signature Verification.”

Links: https://voteathome.org/signature-verification/

Stanford Law School report: https://voteathome.org/portfolio/stanford-law-school-report-signature-verification-and-mail-ballots-guaranteeing-access-while-preserving-integrity/

N-26 | SC-1, SC-2 - A software flaw in New Jersey’s motor-vehicle system registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024 - enrolling applicants even though they answered “no” to the citizenship question - and a preliminary state review found about 400 cast ballots in 2023-2024 elections, with no evidence any race was swayed; the error took a year to fix, was not disclosed until July 2026, and those registered remained on the rolls up to three years before removal began.

Source: Gov. Sherrill announcement (July 21, 2026); NBC News; New Jersey Monitor; WHYY; CBS New York (July 2026). NOTE: Responsibility is contested - the vendor says the state Division of Elections is responsible for verifying eligibility - and a DOJ investigation is open; figures may change.

Links: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/6600-noncitizens-registered-vote-nj-software-error-governor-says-rcna588524

Governor’s press conference: https://newjerseymonitor.com/2026/07/21/governor-software-error-non-citizens-register-vote/

How the glitch occurred: https://whyy.org/articles/new-jersey-motor-vehicle-commission-glitch-noncitizens-registered-vote/

Vendor dispute and DOJ demand: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-jersey-noncitizen-voting-mikie-sherrill-department-of-justice/

N-27 | SC-1, SC-2 - Oregon’s motor-voter system mistakenly registered more than 1,600 people who had not provided proof of citizenship, an error discovered in 2024 and traced to DMV staff mis-selecting document types; state reviews found about 17 of them had voting histories - several legally, having become citizens before voting - with roughly 9 potentially ineligible, and the governor paused automatic registration until an independent audit produced new rules in 2026.

Source: Oregon Secretary of State newsroom (Sept. 2024); AP (Sept. 30, 2024); KOIN (Feb. 2026).

Links: https://apps.oregon.gov/oregon-newsroom/OR/SOS/Posts/Post/dmv-potential-ineligible-voters-improper-registration-records

AP report: https://wreg.com/news/your-voice-your-vote/ap-politics/ap-oregon-dmv-waited-weeks-to-tell-elections-officials-about-voter-registration-error/

Audit and 2026 rule changes: https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/oregon-motor-voter-program-updated-after-1k-people-mistakenly-registered-to-vote/

N-28 | SC-5 - Indiana’s photo-ID law cost about $12.2 million over its first four years - including more than $1.3 million to produce 168,000+ free IDs, nearly $2.2 million in lost card-fee revenue, and $2.2 million in voter education - roughly equal to the state Elections Division’s entire annual budget at the time.

Source: Brennan Center, “The Cost of Voter ID Laws: What the Courts Say” (2011), citing Indiana state estimates; Keystone Research Center (2011).

Links: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/Democracy/Voter%20ID%20Cost%20Memo%20FINAL.pdf

Keystone Research Center analysis: https://keystoneresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/Cost-of-Voter-ID-Law-to-PA.pdf

N-29 | SC-5 - Official fiscal notes and independent estimates for other states’ voter-ID laws ranged from about $720,000 plus $260,000 recurring (South Carolina) to $5.7 million (Wisconsin), $6 million in year one plus $4 million annually (Missouri), and $18-25 million over three years (North Carolina), with voter-education spending varying from $0.15 to $1.37 per voter.

Source: Brennan Center cost memo and state updates (2011); Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Links: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/update-voter-id-costs-states

Cost memo (PDF): https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/Democracy/Voter%20ID%20Cost%20Memo%20FINAL.pdf

Education-cost figures: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/truth-about-voter-id-costs

N-30 | SC-5 - The Supreme Court has described voting as “a fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights.”

Source: Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886).

Link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/356/

N-31 | SC-2 - The federal government’s two official counts of registered voters diverge by tens of millions: The Census Bureau’s 2024 survey reports about 174 million Americans saying they are registered (73.6% of voting-age citizens), while the Election Assistance Commission’s 2024 administrative survey of state rolls counts more than 211 million active registered voters (86.6%) - a gap driven by how “registered” is defined and by names states have not yet pruned as duplicate, outdated, or ineligible.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, “Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2024” (P20-587, Apr. 2025); U.S. Election Assistance Commission, 2024 EAVS Comprehensive Report (June 30, 2025).

Links: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/p20-587.html

Full EAVS report (PDF): https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/2024_EAVS_Report_508.pdf

EAC report hub: https://www.eac.gov/research-and-data/studies-and-reports

Sub-Claim Cross-Reference Matrix

Legend:

• Built from the sub-claim tags in the registry.

• Three dashes means no direct factual entry in that lane, although indirect facts may be presented in other sub-claims.

• Number in parenthesis indicates number of links for that Evidence number. For instance, A-1 (3) means three links to facts support A-1.

Source Index

Alphabetical list of all sources cited in the registry. Sources are unnumbered; the permanent IDs belong to facts, not sources.

404 Media · ACLU · Ballotpedia / Ballotpedia News · Bipartisan Policy Center · Brennan Center for Justice · Carter-Baker Commission · Charles Hamilton Houston Institute (Harvard Law School) · Congress.gov · Common Cause/Georgia v. Billups (N.D. Ga. 2005) · Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (U.S. 2008) · FinCEN (U.S. Treasury) · Gallup · GAO · Georgia Secretary of State · Harvard Law Review · Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database · Indiana Code / Indiana Secretary of State · Jones, Cross & Granato (Univ. of Houston) · Keystone Research Center · Michael J. Fox Foundation · MIT Election Lab · NBC News · NBER (Cantoni & Pons) · NCSL · North Carolina State Board of Elections · Pew Center on the States · Pew Research Center · Rasmussen Reports · Spectrum News · Stanford Law Review · U.S. Code (18 U.S.C. § 611; 52 U.S.C. § 21083) · U.S. Constitution · Utah state election review · Veasey v. Perry (S.D. Tex. 2014) · Votebeat · White House (Executive Order, Mar. 2025) · Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution┃Summary

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution┃Summary

What Does This Claim Mean?

Evidence is noted in [ ]

I. The Claim

This claim proposes a two-factor law of election administration. Before casting a ballot, every voter must (1) present a government-issued identification document displaying the voter’s photograph, and (2) provide a signature that election officials verify against the signature in the voter’s registration record.

The two factors parallel security practice in banking and computing: Something you carry (the ID) and something you do (the signature). Each check exists somewhere in current American election law. The combination - both checks, applied to every voter, at the moment of voting - does not exist in any American state at the time of this writing.

II. The Sub-Claims: What Must Be Proven

The claim currently has six sub-claims. Supporting and dissenting facts for each sub-claim are presented in Q2 - Evidence, and their consequences are discussed in Q3 - Impact.

1. Voter identity fraud that verification can prevent - in-person impersonation and fraudulent mail ballots - occurs, is likely undercounted, and could affect the outcome of a close election.

2. Current safeguards are insufficient, and advances in digital technologies – including AI – are making them more so by lowering the cost and increasing the scale of identity fraud.

3. Requiring government-issued photo ID and signature verification will reduce ineligible voting.

4. Eligible voters would not be wrongly blocked - neither by lack of ID nor by signature mismatch.

5. The cost and effort are justified.

6. The requirement can be implemented fairly and uniformly.

Sub-claims 1-3 assert the problem and the remedy; sub-claims 4-6 assert the absence of unacceptable side effects.

III. The First Factor: Government-Issued Photo ID

A. “Government-issued”

This term excludes all private credentials: Employee badges, membership cards, store accounts. Qualifying documents typically include:

• Driver’s licenses and state-issued ID cards

• U.S. passports

• Military identification cards

• Tribal identification cards (in many, not all, states)

States dispute the edges of this category. Some accept student IDs from public universities (which are government institutions); others exclude them. North Dakota requires a physical street address on the ID, which excludes many tribal IDs listing PO boxes - a point of active litigation and research.[D-13]

B. “Photo”

The photo requirement excludes documents that establish identity or residency without an image: Utility bills, bank statements, paychecks, birth certificates, and Social Security cards.

This exclusion changes existing federal law. Under the Help America Vote Act, a first-time voter who registered by mail may verify identity with a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, or other government document showing name and address.[N-000042] This claim replaces that menu with a photo-only standard: Documents that prove where you live would no longer count as proof of who you are.

C. Strict versus non-strict enforcement

What defines a photo-ID law is not the request, but the consequence. Election-law explainers sort ID laws by what happens to a voter who arrives without one:

1. Strict: The voter may cast only a provisional ballot, counted only if the voter presents valid ID to officials within a set period of time.

2. Non-strict: The voter may proceed by signing an affidavit of identity, by signature match, or by a poll worker vouching for them.

The claim’s plain language - “should be required” - points to the strict model. An affidavit alternative could be considered, though it would convert the requirement into a non-strict law.

IV. The Second Factor: Signature Verification

A. How it works

Election officials compare the signature the voter provides against a signature in the registration record, most commonly collected at registration or through the department of motor vehicles. In some states, officials compare against multiple signatures on file so they can account for how a person’s handwriting evolves.[N-25]

In high-volume jurisdictions, software performs a first pass - measuring letter formation, slant, proportions - and flags doubtful matches for human review.

B. Where it is used today

• Thirty-two States conduct signature verification on returned absentee/mail ballots.[N-2]

• Ten states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands verify only that the envelope has been signed, without comparing the signature.[N-3]

• States with no documentary ID requirement typically have voters sign a poll roster and mandate that officials compare those signatures to registration records, checked alongside verbal confirmation of name and address.[N-4]

C. The cure process

When a signature does not match, the voter should receive timely notification and instructions for correcting - “curing” - the discrepancy.[N-6] Cure windows and methods vary by state; some require an in-person visit, others accept a mailed or electronic affirmation.

D. Known limitations

Signatures change - with age, injury, stroke, and conditions such as Parkinson’s disease. Disability advocates note the real concern that a ballot signature may no longer match the one on file, and some states require a doctor’s attestation to resolve it.[D-16]

This cuts both ways in the debate: Proponents cite signature drift as the reason a photo ID must anchor the system; opponents note that layering photo ID on top of signature match removes the fallback that currently protects voters whose documents or signatures are imperfect.

V. “At the Time of Voting”

This phrase locates both requirements at the moment of ballot access - not at registration.

• In-person voters: The polling place, before receiving a ballot.

• Mail voters: Ballot return, meaning the signature on the return envelope plus, under this claim, a copy of photo ID submitted with the application or the ballot.

The registration stage is governed by different proposals entirely (see Section XIII). Keeping the stages distinct is essential to arguing this claim on its own merits.

VI. What the Claim Is Not

Three boundary markers prevent the most common confusions:

1. It is not a registration requirement. Proof-of-citizenship measures such as the SAVE Act operate when a person registers, not when they vote.

2. It is not a citizenship check. A driver’s license proves identity, not citizenship; lawful permanent residents hold them.

3. It is not current law. No state requires both factors of every voter; the claim proposes a change in all American voting.

VII. The Law Today

A. The constitutional allocation

The Constitution assigns election administration to the states first.

1. The Elections Clause (Article I, Section 4) provides that the times, places, and manner of holding congressional elections “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” while reserving to Congress the power to “make or alter such Regulations.”

2. Article II similarly directs each state legislature to determine the manner of appointing presidential electors.

3. Voter qualifications are likewise state-set, bounded by the constitutional amendments barring discrimination by race, sex, poll tax, and age.

Three consequences follow for this claim:

1. The 50-state patchwork below is the system working as designed, not a defect.

2. This claim can be enacted state-by-state or by Congress for federal elections under its Elections Clause power (the route HAVA took).

3. The constitutional text assigns the enactment roles to state legislatures and Congress; it does not mention the president. Whether an executive order can nonetheless impose such a mandate is the live question noted in subsection D.

B. The state patchwork

As of October 2025, 36 states required identification at the polls; 24 of those required photo ID, with exceptions; 14 states generally required no ID on Election Day.[N-1]

The 36 states with ID requirements vary widely on which IDs are accepted and on what happens when a voter lacks one, and enforcement for mail ballots is more confusing still.[N-1]

C. The archetype: Indiana and Crawford

Indiana’s statute is the model strict photo-ID law: a government-issued photo ID whose name conforms to the registration record, with a ten-day cure window for provisional voters.[N-7, N-8]

The Supreme Court upheld it in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008), observing that flagrant examples of fraud have been documented throughout the nation’s history and could affect the outcome of a close election.[A-6] Crawford remains the constitutional floor on which every subsequent photo-ID law stands.

D. The federal layer

No federal law imposes a general voting-ID requirement. HAVA touches only first-time mail registrants.[N-9] The rules keep changing: President Trump has promised an executive order making voter ID a national requirement - an assertion of federal power over elections that even many conservatives historically rejected, given that implementation logistics across 36 differing state regimes would be complex.[N-24]

Whether a national mandate can be imposed by executive action, rather than by Congress or the states, is a live constitutional question - but it does not change the meaning of the claim, only the identity of the enacting authority.

VIII. What Fraud Each Factor Targets

The two factors aim at different threats, and this asymmetry drives the debate.

A concrete illustration of the second: A Florida man forged his deceased wife’s signature on a mail-ballot request form; routine signature checks against the voter rolls caught the fraud before a ballot was cast, and he was charged with vote-by-mail fraud.[A-4] Photo ID at a polling place would never have touched that scheme; signature verification did.

This is why the claim’s two-factor structure matters: Each factor covers the other’s blind spot. It is also why single-factor critiques (“impersonation is rare”) and single-factor defenses (“fraud databases prove the need”) both require careful matching of evidence to the factor it actually concerns.

IX. How Proponents Explain the Claim

Sources: Heritage Foundation, America First Policy Institute, the White House.

1. Fraud is real and disenfranchising. Heritage’s Election Fraud Database catalogs proven cases - each one ending in a finding of wrongdoing or an overturned election - and argues that every fraudulent vote effectively disenfranchises an eligible voter.[A-1] Heritage acknowledges that nobody knows the full extent of election fraud, but contends the vulnerabilities in the current system are themselves the problem.[A-2]

2. Security cannot rest on an honor system. Election integrity is essential, and the security of the ballot box cannot be left to a simple honor system; states have a duty to safeguard the process.

3. The everyday-ID analogy. Photo ID is already required to board a plane, drive, open a bank account, and buy age-restricted goods. Voting, which governs all of these, warrants at least equal care.

4. The burden is minimal and curable. Should states provide free IDs to those who cannot afford them, the requirement imposes no material cost.

5. Confidence is a legitimate end in itself. Verification sustains trust in outcomes regardless of how much fraud exists - trust, but verify.

X. How Opponents Explain the Claim

Sources: Brennan Center for Justice, ACLU.

1. The targeted fraud is vanishingly rare. Analyses of the Heritage database itself found only a handful of in-person impersonation cases across billions of votes - a phenomenon less common than being struck by lightning.[D-1]

2. Millions lack the required documents. It is estimated more than 49 million American adults do not possess an unexpired driver’s license with their current name and address, and seniors, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students are especially likely to lack one.[D-3, D-5]

3. “Free” IDs are not free. Obtaining one requires underlying documents (birth certificates cost money), travel to issuing offices, and time off work - costs one federal court analogized to an unconstitutional poll tax.[D-14]

4. The signature factor has its own casualties. Voters whose signatures have changed through age or disability face rejection risks that a second mandatory factor compounds rather than cures.[D-16]

5. Not all ID rules are opposed. The Brennan Center states that it has long supported commonsense voter ID rules - voters should be who they say they are - and objects specifically to laws requiring forms of ID that many eligible Americans do not have.[A-12] The dispute, in other words, is over this claim’s strictness, not over identity verification as a concept.

XI. Public Opinion

The photo-ID component commands rare bipartisan support:

1. Pew Research Center (August 2025): 83% of U.S. adults favored requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification to vote.[N-12]

2. Gallup (October 2024): 84% favored requiring photo identification at the voting place,[N-11] including 98% of Republicans, 84% of independents, and 67% of Democrats.[N-11]

3. Rasmussen Reports (January 2025): 77% of likely voters called photo ID a reasonable measure to protect election integrity.[N-13]

No comparable polling isolates the two-factor combination this claim proposes; public support for the added signature mandate is untested.

XII. Scenarios the Claim Must Resolve

1. The forgotten ID. The voter casts a provisional ballot, counted only if valid ID is presented within the cure window - ten days in Indiana.[N-8]

2. The citizen who owns no qualifying ID. Proponents answer: Free state IDs remove the burden.[A-10, A-11] Opponents answer: The underlying documents, travel, and time still cost real money, and the burden falls on those least able to bear it.[D-4, D-14]

3. The voter without transportation. Proponent designs include mobile ID-issuance units and free ID cards - the pairing the 2005 Carter-Baker Commission recommended when it endorsed photo ID.[A-11]

4. The mail voter. Signature verification already governs most mail ballots;[N-2] the claim adds a photo-ID element, presumably a copied or scanned ID with the application or return envelope, as a few states now require.[N-5]

a) For this claim to advance, the details of this process must be specified, including its cure mechanism; otherwise, the claim covers in-person voting only. That process is analyzed under the companion claim Mail-in ballots must meet the same identity-verification standards as in-person voting (Claim #04-003-003).

XIII. Adjacent Issues: Related but Outside the Claim

A. Upstream ID security

The claim’s entire security value depends on the integrity of the ID-issuance process. A fraudulently obtained government photo ID defeats verification at the polls perfectly.

Hardening DMV and passport issuance is therefore a companion reform the claim assumes, but does not contain.

B. Citizenship verification

Federal law - the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 - explicitly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and no state allows noncitizens to vote in statewide elections.[N-14, N-15]

The genuine movement on this issue is local and runs in both directions:

• As of March 2026, the District of Columbia and certain municipalities in California, Maryland, and Vermont allowed noncitizens to vote in some local elections.[N-15]

• Los Angeles voters will decide in November 2026 whether noncitizen residents may vote in city elections.[N-17]

• New York City’s 2021 attempt was struck down under the state constitution, a ruling the New York Court of Appeals affirmed 6-1 in March 2025.[N-16]

• Meanwhile, from 2018 through 2025, voters approved all 15 statewide constitutional amendments strengthening citizenship requirements for voting, averaging 73% support, with six more citizenship measures on 2026 ballots.[N-17]

Citizenship, however, is verified at registration - the stage the SAVE Act and the 2025 executive order address[N-18, N-19] - making it a companion issue to, not a component of, this claim.

XIV. Conclusion

This claim proposes that every American voter, in person or by mail, verify identity two ways at the moment of voting: A government-issued photo ID and a signature matched to the registration record.

It adopts the strict enforcement model, with provisional ballots and cure periods as the safety valve. It is stricter than the law of any state today, and under the Constitution it could be enacted by the states individually or by Congress for federal elections.

Its validity rests on six sub-claims - that preventable fraud occurs, that current safeguards fail, that the remedy works, harms no eligible voter, justifies its cost, and can be implemented fairly.

Whether each survives the evidence is the work of Q2.

Meaning ┃ Evidence ┃ Impact ┃Solution┃Summary