A group has filed a federal lawsuit to block a new New Hampshire law that prevents the use of student identification cards when registering to vote or casting a ballot, which they call the latest in long-running efforts to disenfranchise young voters.
The suit argues that the law, House Bill 323, as well as a subsequent ruling by Secretary of State David Scanlan about voter registration, “continues to privilege older voters while discriminating against younger voters by invalidating a form of identification disproportionately used by eighteen to twenty-five-year-olds.”
It was filed Tuesday, Aug. 11, by the group Coalition for an Open Democracy in U.S. District Court in Concord and asks for injunctions blocking the law from taking effect for the state party primary on Sept. 8.
Younger voters are generally more likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates and the state government has been largely controlled by the Republican Party for many years.
HB 323 amends RSA 659:13 by eliminating student identification cards as a valid form of proving identity when obtaining a ballot, something that had been allowed since 2012. It went into effect on June 2 after Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed it into law.
Supporters argued that student ID cards are not secure enough to guarantee that a person has legal residency in the state, leading to voting by ineligible people.
The suit dismisses that argument: “… The New Hampshire legislature sought to justify the bill by referencing a non-existent problem: non-resident voter fraud, for which no evidence has or can be cited…”
The law applies to voting but on April 23, Secretary Scanlan announced that “student IDs cannot be used as proof of ID when registering to vote, requesting an absentee ballot, or checking in to vote in an election,” which extended the ban to voter registration as well.
The lawsuit says that registering to vote is covered by a separate law, RSA 654:12(d), which was not amended by HB 323, and argues that Scanlan’s announcement extending the ban on student IDs to registration is illegal.
In part of its argument, the suit notes that the major form of identification allowed under state law is a drivers license but that an increasing number of teens are not learning to drive. In that case, prospective voters must go to a DMV office and pay $20 to get a state-issued identification card, which the suit argues is “unduly burdensome, fails to increase election security, and imposes an unconstitutional fee on first-time voters.”
As a comparison, it says that a relatively high percentage of people over the age of 65 also do not drive but that state law gives them some options, such as using expired drivers licenses, obtaining a state ID card without having to pay the fee, or even the fact that residents of nursing homes can have their identity vouched for the facility administrator.
“No lawmaker has raised concerns about older voters using these lenient rules to commit voter fraud,” the suit argues. “But by providing accommodations to older voters while at the same time passing burdensome laws expressly targeting young voters and making it difficult for young voters to register and vote, New Hampshire is engaging in unconstitutional age discrimination…”
The suit notes that two earlier laws that changed rules on New Hampshire domicile, effectively making many college students ineligible to vote, were rejected by the New Hampshire Supreme Court on constitutional grounds. “Having failed to disenfranchise young voters by changing the domicile rules, New Hampshire politicians are now trying to do so by changing the voter ID rules,” it argues.
The suit can be seen at storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nhd.68549/gov.uscourts.nhd.68549.1.0.pdf
