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This past week proponents of the California Voter ID Initiative announced they had collected 1.3 million signatures on a petition to force the issue on the ballot for a vote in the November 2026 midterm election.
“Getting these signatures was only possible because of the amazing team effort that involved multiple organizations, elected leaders, contributors, and volunteers,” stated CA State Rep. Carl DeMaio – Chairman of Reform California and one of the initiative’s lead proponents.
Under California state law 874,641valid signatures from registered voters have to be collected within a 180 day window for an initiative to be placed on the ballot.
But the CA Voter ID Initiative faced major hurdles in getting the signatures – ranging from no big monied interests willing to back the effort to government regulations that limited the ability of coalition campaign committees to work together.
“Our first challenge was going to be funding because ballot measure signature drives are expensive and Voter ID provides no financial benefit to special interests who traditionally provide ballot measure funding,” DeMaio explained.
“Our second challenge was California politicians don’t like true citizen initiatives so they have imposed insane rules that make a grassroots and coalition-based signature drive nearly impossible,” stated DeMaio.
For example, the Fair Political Practices Commission imposed rules on DeMaio, State Senator Tony Strickland, and other elected officials prohibiting them from coordinating with other campaign committees simply because they are elected officials.
“We were told we could not be involved in any operational way with outside groups – which made signature collection difficult,” DeMaio added.
“The whole effort was like the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ – if you build it, will they come? – only this was if you file it, will they collect signatures?” DeMaio quipped.
Now that the signature drive has come to a successful completion, DeMaio says a number of groups and individual leaders deserve accolades and credit for their leadership in the effort.
1. Julie Luckey – Californians for Voter ID
After the 2026 ballot initiative was first proposed, Julie Luckey formed Californians for Voter ID – a campaign committee dedicated to raising funds to qualify the effort through paid signature gathering.
“Reform California relies exclusively on volunteers to gather signatures and while we always hoped that volunteer signature gathering would produce a lot of signatures, you always end up needing paid signatures to get an initiative qualified,” DeMaio noted.
“That’s where Julie Luckey came in and saved the day – by raising the funds to ensure a paid signature gathering effort would back the measure – and without Julie Luckey’s leadership, I can absolutely say CA Voter ID would not be on the ballot this year,” DeMaio says.
As of last report, Luckey’s committee raised nearly $10 million for paid signature gathering and accounted for two-thirds of the signatures collected.
2. Teresa Hernandez and Seth Morrison – Orange County Lincoln Club
After the 2024 election, Teresa Hernandez and Seth Morrison of the Orange County Lincoln Club convened stakeholder discussions about the possibility of putting a CA Voter ID Initiative on the ballot
“The Orange County Lincoln Club brought us all together and provided the initial funding to do the polling that showed that Californians of all party affiliations were hungry for Voter ID,” DeMaio notes.
Hernandez has gone on to raise more than $1 million to support the effort.
3. Local Republican Party Committees
During the signature drive many county Republican Party committees stepped up to organize rallies and raise awareness of the petition. Three counties served as the headquarters for mailings statewide with the petition – Orange County, Riverside and San Diego.
“We saw 32 of the 58 county Republican Party committees participate in signature drives – and Chairs Will O’Neill (Orange County), Paula Whitsell (San Diego), and Lori Stone (Riverside) went above and beyond to help with mailing projects,” DeMaio notes.
4. Congressman Ken Calvert
Congressman Ken Calvert took the lead at the federal level in providing leadership on the CA Voter ID Initiative – securing key endorsements and funding. Calvert even mailed the petition to his constituents at his own expense.
5. State Senator Tony Strickland
State Senator Tony Strickland stepped up as the statewide co-chair of the coalition backing CA Voter ID. Strickland formed his own “Make California Golden Again” ballot measure committee to collect signatures and also mailed the petition to his constituents at his own expense.
6. Ali Macedo, David Tangipa and Charles Hughes
State Assemblymembers Ali Macedo and David Tangipa also formed separate ballot measure committees to collect signatures in the Central Valley. Assembly candidate Charles Hughes took the lead in the high desert.
7. 18,000+ Volunteers Statewide – 100,000+ Collectors Statewide
Reform California focused on recruiting, training and supporting volunteers to collect signatures. “We started out with a stretch goal of activating 10,000 volunteers but we ended up exceeding 18,000 volunteers,” DeMaio notes.
On top of the volunteers, DeMaio estimates more than 100,000 individuals collected signatures from someone other than themselves.
“Every single person who took the time to collect signatures is a part of this achievement – and countless volunteers went the extra mile by collecting hundreds – and in some cases thousands – of signatures,” DeMaio adds.
DeMaio says while the CA Voter ID signature drive has been a success, the hard part remains organizing and funding the campaign to pass the measure in the November election.
“We’re only getting started – and for Voter ID to be enacted in California, we’ll need even more HEROES to step up and help out,” DeMaio concludes.
