California Proposition 39
California initiative constitutional amendment requiring ID to vote in person and ID numbers by mail.
Last refreshed: 5 November 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Why did California reject voter ID while Nevada and Ohio approved it?
Timeline for California Proposition 39
Failed at the ballot
US Midterms 2026: Voters back citizen-only voting in 5 statesBackground
California voters rejected Proposition 39 on 3 November 2026, the Associated Press projected. On unofficial results at 4:26am on 4 November, 4,495,607 votes (58.6%) were against and 3,176,217 (41.4%) for, ABC10 reported.
The initiative constitutional amendment would have required in-person voters to show government-issued ID and mail voters to write the last four digits of an ID number on the ballot envelope. It also required officials to check voters' citizenship and the state to issue free voter ID cards on request. The Legislative Analyst's Office put the cost at up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Assemblymember Carl DeMaio and his group Reform California put it on the ballot.
About 13 million of California's 16 million voters in November 2024 voted by mail, so the measure reached most ballots cast. It was one of three mail-ballot ID measures that lost on 3 November, alongside Arizona and Colorado, while in-person ID passed in Nevada and Ohio.
Did California Proposition 39 pass?
What would Proposition 39 have required California voters to do?
Who was behind California's voter ID measure?
How much would Proposition 39 have cost California?
Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Updated 5 November 2026. Editorial standards.