34 States Introduce ALEC Voter ID Bills in Coordinated Suppression Campaign

Following the 2010 Republican wave that gave the GOP control of both legislative chambers in twenty-six states, at least 34 states introduced nearly identical voter ID bills in the 2011 legislative session. The bills used ALEC’s 2009 model “Voter ID Act” template language, demonstrating systematic coordination rather than independent state policy decisions.

By year’s end, six states—Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin—had enacted strict photo ID requirements, with legislators in each state having documented ALEC connections and membership. Mississippi passed a constitutional amendment through an initiative process involving an ALEC task force member. Elections expert Doug Chapin observed that Republican legislators in these states “did not come up with this idea independently,” documenting the coordinated national campaign.

A News21 analysis found that more than half of the 62 photo ID bills introduced nationwide were sponsored by ALEC members or conference attendees. The bills targeted the same vulnerable populations identified in ALEC’s model legislation: elderly voters, low-income citizens, minorities, and students—demographics less likely to possess driver’s licenses or state-issued photo IDs and more likely to vote Democratic.

The coordinated rollout represented the largest single-year assault on voting access in modern history, transforming ALEC’s corporate-written template into enforceable state law across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. The campaign demonstrated how ALEC’s legislative model—where 300 corporations pay membership fees to write legislation with 2,000 state legislators—could rapidly deploy voter suppression infrastructure nationwide. This systematic approach to restricting ballot access would become the blueprint for future waves of voting restrictions, particularly after the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County decision gutted the Voting Rights Act.