Citing security, Republicans push to exclude student ID cards from voting verification

Nashua voters check in on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Will Steinfeld/New Hampshire Bulletin)

Weeks before a lawsuit against a recent New Hampshire voting law goes to trial in federal court, state lawmakers are pushing to tighten voting requirements further.

The House passed a bill this month that would eliminate the ability for high school or college students to use their student identification cards to vote. Instead, under the proposed law, those students would be required to present an ID issued by the federal government or any U.S. state, such as a driver’s license, government ID card, or passport.

The Republican-led chamber also advanced legislation to end the ability for local election officials to personally identify voters they know and allow them to vote without identification.

The two bills — which will both need approval from the Senate — were passed on Jan. 7, the first day that lawmakers returned to the House after a monthslong break. And they highlighted an ongoing push by Republicans to impose no-excuses laws requiring proof of residency, citizenship, and identity in order to vote and register to vote in New Hampshire.

Rep. Ross Berry, a Weare Republican and the chairman of the House Election Law Committee, argued the state has made major strides toward building trust in elections through a series of recent laws requiring more documentation and verification to vote.

To Berry, the previous voting process — in which people could register without showing citizenship documents and could vote on Election Day without showing identification — was a “farce.” In both cases, voters were required to sign legally binding affidavits stating they were qualified to vote on penalty of perjury. But Berry said because their ballots were accepted after they signed the affidavits, the process left the possibility of fraud. 

“In order to have the general will of the people, you have to know who’s voting in your elections,” Berry said, addressing the House Wednesday. 

It’s a contention at the heart of the yearslong partisan war over elections. Democrats and voting rights groups say the instances of voter fraud are vanishingly small and that the affidavit system still allowed for the prosecution of illegal voters. Imposing stricter requirements, on the other hand, could bar otherwise eligible voters from being able to vote, impeding on their rights, they argue. 

The political fight has persisted through the recent passage of state laws requiring IDs at the polls with no exceptions, and mandating that people newly registering to vote in the state provide hard-copy proof of their U.S. citizenship via a birth certificate, passport, or other document.

That latter law, passed in 2024 under House Bill 1569, is the strongest proof-of-citizenship statute in the country, and is currently being challenged by a number of voting rights groups. Those groups, which include the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and the progressive Elias Group, allege that the laws are unconstitutional. A multi-week trial in that case is scheduled for February. 

Addressing House Bill 323, the legislation to bar student IDs as forms of identification, Democrats have denounced it as an unnecessary barrier to voting. Rep. James Newsom of Hopkinton dismissed concerns that people are using fraudulent student IDs to vote, noting that there have been no known examples in the state. 

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Newsom argued that the process to obtain a student identification card from the University of New Hampshire — which requires fingerprints — is robust. 

“With zero cases of voter fraud of this type, this bill will not improve election security,” he said. “Zero minus zero is still zero.”

Instead, Newsom and other Democrats said the law would have the effect of turning away legitimate voters who live in New Hampshire from being able to vote in the state. And they have charged that Republicans are targeting students in college towns, which tend to vote for Democrats. 

“The reality behind this bill is a blatant attempt to unconstitutionally prohibit students who are already registered and qualified voters in New Hampshire from exercising their undeniable constitutional right to vote,” Newsom said. 

Berry and other Republicans reject the charge that the laws impose major barriers to vote, and compare the documentary requirements to those needed to drive a car. Berry argued all the recent stricter voting laws strike a balance between accountability and ease.

Republicans have made a mission of “trying to get to a system where it’s easy to vote and it’s actually not easy to cheat, and that you know who’s voting in your elections,” Berry argued. 

And he said it is necessary to ban student ID cards because it is too easy to forge student ID cards.

“This is kind of the last buttoning up of five years worth of work,” Berry said. Five Democrats joined Republicans to vote for the bill last week. 

House Republicans continued that effort by passing House Bill 317, which bars election officials from personally identifying voters. Republicans had argued the process was impossible to verify and was vulnerable to abuse; Democrats called it another “roadblock” to voting. 

“It is the classic bill that is a solution in search of a problem; it also takes a needless swipe at the integrity of our outstanding election officials,” wrote Rep. Gerald Ward, a Portsmouth Democrat, in a written argument ahead of the vote. 

One Republican effort fell short last week: an attempt to amend the New Hampshire Constitution to require that voters “actually reside” in their place of domicile to vote failed to get a three-fifths supermajority vote in the House necessary to advance. 

But as lawmakers hurtle into the 2026 session, the efforts to tighten voting laws are continuing. Lawmakers will consider Republican bills to prohibit voters who are legal residents of other states from registering to vote in New Hampshire; to allow the Secretary of State’s Office to conduct random audits of voters’ citizenship status; and to require stricter identification requirements for people voting by absentee ballot and for overseas voters. 

Not all proposals are partisan. Rep. Matt Wilhelm, a Manchester Democrat, and Berry are co-sponsoring House Bill 1600, which would allow New Hampshire residents to register to vote when renewing their driver’s license at the Division of Motor Vehicles. New Hampshire is one of a handful of states that do not provide that service; past efforts to pass it have run into opposition from Senate Republicans, who cite cost concerns.