Bad Bill of the Week: Student ID Bill Would Threaten Reforms

Liberal/progressive legislators look to add yet another official form of identification to the already lengthy list of acceptable voter photo IDs with HB 240. This bill would amend the list of acceptable voter photo IDs to include college and university ID’s when the new voter ID law goes into effect in 2016.

The bill’s primary sponsors – Reps. Larry Hall (D-Durham), Marvin Lucas (D-Durham), Garland Pierce (D-Scotland), and Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford) – would have us believe that college students don’t already have official photo ID’s and that they are being singled out in an attempt to suppress their votes. What we do know is that college students have already gone through a rigorous application and registration process that requires official ID’s throughout – not the least of which is the schools’ requirement for official ID’s in order to receive a school ID.

The authors of the Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA), the landmark voter reform legislation passed in 2013 that includes the voter ID provision, took all of this into account to come up with a comprehensive list of official ID’s that will be accepted at the polls.  The “Photo identification requirement for voting in person” section of the bill includes as valid ID’s eight different options, including: an NC driver’s license, a U.S. passport, a military ID, a tribal enrollment card or a driver’s license issued in another state.

So why do liberal legislators want to add to the list of acceptable voter ID’s with what is essentially a duplication of other already accepted forms of IDs?

There are several possible answers to this question, but the chief one is typical of the progressivism game: add as many new forms of acceptable identification as you can to the list of official IDs. In the end, there will be so many forms of acceptable ID it’s almost like having no ID requirement at all. We saw this happen with the list of IDs that were required for same-day registrants in North Carolina. When same-day registration was in effect, ID was required, but ID consisted of documents such as copies of utility bills. In the case of college students, they weren’t required to provide identification at all as long as their names were on a list provided by the college or university.

Because it seeks to set back common-sense election reform and return our state to a time when our election system was confusing and dysfunctional, with no built-in security to protect the integrity of a person’s vote, HB 240 is this week’s Bad Bill of the Week.