Government-issued student identification cards are no longer accepted for voting purposes in New Hampshire.
“Student IDs are just not that reliable,” Washington, D.C. attorney Andrellos Mitchell told NTD. “They’re easy to make, easy to fake, and that’s been true for decades.”
Without the student ID option, students must now provide a passport or a New Hampshire-issued driver's license to cast a standard ballot because under the new law, only driver’s licenses, passports, and military identification are permissible.
The change could impact thousands of student voters in public schools statewide.
“It makes it a little harder for some students to vote if that’s the only ID they have,” Mitchell said. “So, you’re trading convenience for security.”
Ayotte did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
The new restriction represents a reversal of the policy that had been in place for 13 years.
The New Hampshire Legislature passed HB 595 in 2013, which added student identification cards from New Hampshire colleges, universities, and high schools to the list of acceptable forms of photo ID.
“It clearly solves a credibility problem,” Mitchell added. “If you’re serious about election integrity, you want IDs that are hard to fake and easy to verify. Student IDs don’t really meet that standard.”
New Hampshire is the latest to initiate stricter voter ID laws as President Donald Trump’s federal Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act remains stalled in the U.S. Senate.
For example, state lawmakers in Rhode Island introduced voting legislation that will require verification of U.S. citizenship.
It requires that REAL ID applicants show U.S. citizenship at the Division of Motor Vehicles.
In the state of Michigan, some 750,000 petition signatures were submitted in support of requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and audits of existing voter rolls.
The measure demands that new voter registrants show documents like a passport, birth certificate, plus photo ID or naturalization papers.
Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Utah all enacted proof-of-citizenship voting bills in the past few weeks.