The recent effort to make it harder for Americans to vote in 2012 hits the youth populations in Wisconsin and South Carolina, where elected and school officials raise concerns over the impact of photo ID laws on the student vote.
Due to its history in violating civil rights, South Carolina must seek federal approval before implementing new election laws, including the newly enacted photo ID law, Act 27. Several groups and individuals are urging the U.S. Justice Department to reject the law, including state Senator Gerald Malloy, according to University of South Carolina student newspaper, the Daily Gamecock. Malloy says the new law will disproportionately affect young people, in addition to the estimated 178,000 people who do not have the required ID to vote.
“Young people from ages 18-21 represent 6 percent of the voting population of South Carolina,” said state Sen. Gerald Malloy. “But 11 percent of voters without IDs are 18-21.”
The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board decided Monday to allow only certain college students to use their school IDs as voter ID if they add stickers to indicate the cards’ issue and expiration dates. There are 182,000 students enrolled in Wisconsin public and private universities, which are the only educational institutions that are allowed to utilize the stickers.
“Using stickers would allow colleges and universities across the state to more cheaply and quickly make their IDs acceptable for voting,” the Associated Press reports. “The schools are not required to make any changes, but if they don’t students won’t be able to use their school IDs to vote.”
Oddly, “the Legislature specifically rejected allowing IDs from technical colleges to be accepted. Elections board staff had raised concerns that IDs from other institutions, like truck driving or cosmetology schools, could be valid under the law without the clarification.”
Western Technical College officials are concerned that their students will face more unnecessary obstacles to their fundamental right.
“It was puzzling that they exempted the technical colleges,” Western President Lee Rasch said in a LaCrosse Tribute report. “I’m hopeful that they will take that and fix it.”
According to the Associated Press:
“Western students can use their school ID to register for voting, but under the new law, tech school IDs will not be accepted as a valid form of photo ID at the polls.
But registering is different from actually receiving a ballot, said Reid Magney, a spokesman for the state board. The board’s decision was based on the Legislature’s intent when they passed the new law. Lawmakers tossed out an amendment that offered to include technical college IDs, Magney said.
‘It was something that was proposed, considered and rejected,’ he said.
Even if that’s the case, the preferential treatment is unfair to the hundreds of thousands of technical college students statewide, said Brent Smith, a member of the WTCS Board and vice president of the UW System Board of Regents.”
The Wisconsin law still faces legal challenges: “At Monday’s meeting, the head of the Wisconsin chapter of the League of Women Voters told the board it planned to file a state lawsuit in a couple weeks challenging the law’s constitutionality.” The new law, they say, creates “a new class of people–those without photo IDs–who are excluded from voting.”