The law requires a voter to have a Virginia driver’s license; a U.S. passport or any other photo ID issued by the U.S., Virginia or one of its political subdivisions; a student ID issued by any institute of higher learning in Virginia; an employee identification card; or another form of photo ID.

After the 2014 elections, Cortés and other election officials said that considering the new ID requirements, the election appeared to go smoothly. There were only 773 provisional ballots cast, half of which were eventually counted after voters either presented a valid photo ID or obtained a free photo ID from a registrar’s office. Before 2012, a voter who showed up at a poll without ID could sign an affidavit attesting to their identification so they could vote.

Cortés explained Friday that when the law was passed, his office tried to implement it so as to avoid problems encountered in other states. One way the office did this was to not require any underlying identification from someone in order to get one of the free state voter IDs — even someone who was allowed to cast only a provisional vote that would count after getting a photo voter ID from the state without a photo ID.