VISTA ---- If you need it to write checks and use a credit card, Jim Gibson thinks you need it to vote. Gibson, a trustee for the Vista Unified School District, is leading a campaign for a statewide initiative to require voters to show a photo identification before casting their ballots.

The Vista trustee, a Republican who has run for the state Assembly and also flirted with a run for Oceanside City Council, is one of two main backers of a petition drive to put the initiative on the November ballot.

Gibson said the initiative is a "simple act" that will curb voter fraud. Critics say such measures would only discourage voter participation.

Laguna Niguel investment banking lawyer Robert Ming, a friend of Gibson's, is spearheading the legal effort behind the measure; Gibson said his own role is to get the word out.

"Every time I use my credit card, I have to show my driver's license," Gibson said. "The bottom line is: Why not take voting seriously?"

The initiative, if approved in November, would require voters to show either a driver's license, a California picture identification card, a military identification or a passport in order to be able to vote.

Gibson said the bill is not intended to prevent or discourage people from voting.

"If you are registered to vote, I want you to vote," he said. "If you are not registered to vote, I don't want you to vote. Right now there is no enforcement."

Antonio Gonzalez, the president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, said that initiatives such as the one proposed discourage participation rather than encourage it. With voter registration declining in recent years, he said such initiatives are counterproductive.

The organization advocates educating Latinos in the Southwest about the democratic process. It is headquartered in Los Angeles and San Antonio, Gonzalez said, but the group has done work in San Diego County on and off for 30 years.

"The history of these things is that they create a chilling effect on participation," Gonzalez said. "It's designed to make it harder to participate in the process, not easier."

Members of both houses of the California Legislature have introduced bills with these provisions in each of the last four years, but the bills have died in committee every time by a party-line vote, Ming said, with Democrats opposed and Republicans in favor.

Although similar legislation has been introduced again this year ---- Senate Bill 226 and Assembly Bill 1006 ---- Ming said he had little confidence that the bills would meet a different fate.

As a result, Ming said he has helped organize the petition drive to get the issue on the November ballot. To do so, the group called Citizens Who Vote will need to get more than 373,800 signatures by early August to qualify for the ballot.

To make sure it obtains enough registered California voters' signatures, the group wants to obtain more than 500,000 signatures by that date.

To critics of the measure, Ming said he "can't understand how showing a driver's license is going to discriminate."

He said he is supporting the proposition in part because he wants those against the requirement to have to make public statements opposing it, rather than the bill simply getting killed in committee in Sacramento. Ming said he would rather the Legislature enact the law than have it pass by initiative.

This petition drive will be different than many others, he said, because much of its will be through e-mail, where petition signers can print out the one-page initiative and sign it. He said that part of the initiative will be different than "people standing outside Target" to get signatures, although he said the petition drive will have some of that component as well.

Gibson's work on the statewide initiative is his latest involvement in the political arena outside of the Vista Unified School District, after running for the 73rd Assembly District in 2004 and publicly eyeing an open seat in a special election for council in Oceanside. He ultimately decided not to run for the council seat.

Gibson said those interested in the initiative can go to www.voteridact.com or e-mail him at jg@eNova.us.

Contact staff writer Rob O'Dell at (760) 631-6620 or rodell@nctimes.com.