Peoria Standard

Illinois State Rep. Ryan Spain recently brought up the need for voter ID laws.

"Illinois Democrats weakened election integrity in Illinois with their latest lame-duck shenanigans. The solution is simple- Voter ID," Spain wrote in a Jan. 6 Facebook post.

In his Facebook post, Spain shared a video of him speaking on the House floor about the need for voter identification laws. 

"It seems like a good item for future discussion in the ethics and elections committee that we created during this General Assembly, but regardless there are two problems within this bill that need to be addressed number one and when we do this," Spain said. "This bill is being brought forward because, in this past election, a county clerk in the county of DuPage was not following the law, and rather than instead of following the law and curing that deficiency we're going to change the law to allow that practice to become acceptable in the future." 

"I have a fundamental disagreement with that type of retroactive changing that we would do for something that's very important because the second problem is that in our state, we have made the voter signature the most important component of how we protect the integrity of our elections and now by diluting it, by weakening it, by eliminating a requirement to follow that source document as another member mentioned just moments ago we are weakening the protections of our elections." 

"Folks, it doesn't have to be this way. I would love to be in a situation where the state of Illinois for voting is not relying on election judges and their signature match up expertise to make sure that we have done all that we can to reduce voter fraud. There's a way to do it and we should not be relying on signatures in the state of Illinois. What we should be doing is what most states in our country do. Red states, blue states, swing states, the vast majority of states in the United States have a simple fix and it's voter ID. You show an ID when you go to vote."

On Feb. 17, 2021, Spain sponsored a bill to create a voter identification card and require Illinois voters to show a government-issued identification card in order to vote. The last actions on the bill were taken on March 27, 2021, when it was re-referred to the House Rules Committee.

According to Ballotpedia, Illinois voters are not required to show government ID when they show up to vote in person. The exception is if voters registered for the first time by mail and didn't submit their driver's license, state ID number, or the last four digits of their social security number. Those individuals must show an accepted form of ID with their home address on it.