This November, Nevada voters have a second chance to bring an important safeguard to elections: photo identification. Question 7, a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment, first passed with roughly 73 percent support in 2024 and now returns for the required second vote. Nevada should look to a state that has lived under a similar voter ID law for two decades, Florida, where the record tells a clear story.
Critics warn voter ID laws suppress turnout, especially among voters who can’t easily obtain identification. Florida’s data undercuts that fear. Florida strengthened its photo ID law in 2005. Since then, presidential-year turnout hasn’t declined, it has climbed, peaking at 72.3 percent in 2020, the highest mark in state history. Midterm turnout followed suit, hitting 54.3 percent in 2018, its strongest showing in decades, more than 10 years into the requirement.
If photo ID discouraged voters, the numbers should have moved the other way.
Florida’s Hispanic electorate tells the same story as the state overall: The Hispanic citizen turnout rate climbed from 36 percent in 2014 to 44 percent in 2018, and Hispanic voter participation grew 56 percent over that span. That growth continued into the 2020s, with Hispanic voter registration reaching a record 2.5 million in 2020, up from roughly 2 million in 2016.
There’s a reasonable explanation: confidence. When voters believe an election is secure, they trust the process enough to participate in it. Security and participation aren’t opposing forces; in Florida, they move together. The polling backs this up: An October 2024 Marist survey found 79 percent of Floridians confident their state and local government would run a fair and accurate election, three points above the 76 percent national average measured in the same poll.
Question 7 mirrors much of what Florida already does. In-person voters would show valid photo ID, while mail voters would attach a personal identifier, such as a driver’s license or Social Security number, to their ballot. Florida already requires this for mail-ballot requests. And Florida’s mail voters can track their ballot’s status through systems such as BallotTrax, so they know it was received, verified and counted. That transparency, paired with verified identity, is what a secure, voter-friendly system looks like.
Opponents will say Nevada doesn’t need this because in-person fraud is rare. That may be true, but an ID’s value isn’t limited to stopping fraud already caught. It’s about building confidence at a moment when trust in institutions, including elections, is fragile. A state that can show every ballot belongs to a verified voter is one whose results are harder to credibly dispute.
To be clear: Correlation isn’t proof of causation, and Florida’s rising turnout can’t be attributed to its ID law alone. But that cuts both ways. If photo ID quietly suppressed turnout the way opponents claim, two decades of Florida elections should show some trace of it. Instead, Florida posted its highest presidential turnout on record and its strongest midterm in decades, both well after the law took hold. The specific fear driving opposition to Question 7, that requiring ID keeps people from voting, hasn’t materialized where the policy has actually been tried.
Nevada voters approved Question 7 by a resounding 73 percent in 2024. They should finish the job this November. Two decades of data from Florida demonstrate that expanding access and strengthening election integrity through voter ID can go hand-in-hand.
Bob McClure is president and CEO of The James Madison Institute in Tallahassee, Florida.
