The Supreme Court today denied review in People ex re. Bonta v. City of Huntington Beach and Bixby v. City of Huntington Beach. The Fourth District, Division Three, Court of Appeal in Bonta (a published opinion) and Bixby (a nonpub) invalidated a 2024 provision of the Huntington Beach charter that allowed for requiring voter identification in municipal elections.
The Bonta opinion said, “Is voter identification a matter of ‘“integrity of the electoral process,”’ which our Supreme Court has held is a matter of statewide concern, whether presented in statewide or local elections? (Johnson v. Bradley (1992) 4 Cal.4th 389, 409.) We conclude it is, and that as a result Elections Code section 10005 preempts section 705, subdivision (a)(2) of the Huntington Beach City Charter, which purports to permit Huntington Beach to require voters to present identification to vote in municipal elections.” (Link added.)
Division Three declined to choose sides in the “vigorous nationwide debate” whether voter ID “is necessary to protect against voter fraud and ensure the integrity of elections” or whether voter ID “is unnecessary in light of the extreme rarity of documented cases of voter fraud and harms electoral legitimacy by discriminating against historically disadvantaged groups for whom obtaining such identification is more difficult.”
