Voter ID debate hits TN college campuses: Students can't use school IDs at polls

[doeriver]

Voter ID debate hits college campuses
Students can't use school IDs at polls
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20111027/NEWS/310270067/2288/NLETTER01/Voter-ID-debate-hits-college-campuses
3:19 AM, Oct. 27, 2011

A college student’s university identification card gets used a lot.

The card is probably needed to check out a book from the library or to pass security in a dorm, but the uses go far beyond that. An ID card is also one part debit card, capable of paying for food in the cafeteria, buying time in the laundry room’s washers and dryers, and even purchasing late-night snacks from campus vending machines.

So useful is a campus ID, it may be the only thing students are almost guaranteed to have with them all the time. But there is one place where a student ID will do them no good — at the polls. And that has many students perplexed.

“A lot of us have a driver’s license, but there still are a lot of people that don’t have a driver’s license, particularly freshmen,” said Christopher Martin, a junior at Tennessee State University. “You can’t always count on that.”

While debate over the state’s new voter ID law has centered on its impact on the elderly, the poor and the disabled, many critics say the law is also unfair to students. The law requires voters to show photo identification at the polls, but it explicitly bars students from using their campus IDs, even if they attend a state college or university. The law’s authors say they were concerned students would forge IDs to vote, but foes of the law say the condition is evidence that the ID requirement is simply meant to discourage voting by young people, who tend to favor Democrats.

“I think we’re really aware of what’s going on there,” said Martin, the vice president of Tennessee Federation of College Democrats and its TSU chapter. “I think this is intended to keep in check the main people who voted our current president in.”

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