BOISE, ID – A bill to require Idaho election poll workers to attempt to verify the identity of voters before giving them ballots is headed to the Idaho Senate.

Senate Bill 1322 would change Idaho’s process for voter affidavits, which are sworn legal documents that registered Idaho voters can provide to cast ballots instead of showing photo identification.

The bill would require affidavits to include the voter’s birth date, or the number for their driver’s license or ID card. The election judge would need to “verify the information against the voter registration records prior to issuing a ballot.”

The Senate State Affairs Committee on Wednesday advanced the bill to the full Senate, where it could be considered in the coming days.

Bill cosponsor Sen. Brian Lenney, a Nampa Republican, has long worried about potential fraud with voter affidavits.

Last month, he proposed a separate bill, Senate Bill 1237, that would end Idaho’s use of voter affidavits. That bill hasn’t advanced out of committee yet. Lenney called his latest bill a step in the right direction.

Idaho elections use secret ballots, meaning there’s no way to trace ballots placed in a ballot box back to an individual voter who signed an affidavit, Secretary of State Phil McGrane testified. He said Lenney’s bill would advance election integrity by shoring up safeguards before ballots are issued to voters.

Voter affidavits are rarely used, and already scrutinized by election officials.

County election offices review all affidavits to confirm the voter’s name, address and signature against the individual’s voter record, Secretary of State Office spokesperson Chelsea Bishop previously told the Idaho Capital Sun. Only registered voters may use the affidavit as identification at the polls, and it is a felony to provide false, erroneous or inaccurate information on voter affidavits.

A small fraction of Idaho voters use affidavits to vote. In Idaho’s November 2024 election, 1,245 voters used an affidavit to vote, data from the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office showed.

To become law, Idaho bills must pass the House and Senate, and avoid the governor’s veto.

Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.