With student IDs barred from the New Hampshire polls, campus organizers increase voter outreach

Will Nelson knows his way around a student voter registration drive. 

As a Dartmouth senior and co-president of Dartmouth Civics, a nonpartisan election information organization, Nelson has helped staff countless tables along innumerable campus walkways, from national spectacles like the 2024 presidential election to local town meetings in Hanover. 

Armed with stickers, pens, information sheets, and the occasional box of donuts, Nelson and others help students navigate voter registration and make a voting plan, whether in New Hampshire or via an absentee ballot in their home state. 

“We’ll bring an ice cream truck and we’ll say, ‘OK, town meeting is next week. Here’s how you can register to vote. Here’s what town meeting means in the tradition of New England local governance,’” Nelson said in an interview. 

But this year, that voter outreach got a little more complicated.

A state law passed in April prevents New Hampshire high school and college students from using their school identification cards to vote. Now, in the Nov. 3 midterm election, all New Hampshire residents — including students — must produce government-issued photo identification at the polls.

For students at Dartmouth and other college and university campuses in the state, the law will end the convenience of voting with the cards they carry to get into most buildings on campus. 

But it will not bar most students from voting at all, Nelson has stressed. And most students likely have access to the kind of identification now required, he said. 

“You can still vote here, especially if you’re already registered,” he said. “You just need a different form of identification to check in at the polls.”

The Nov. 3 midterm elections, in which Democrats are vying to retake the U.S. House and Senate, and Republicans are defending their hold, have infused campuses in New Hampshire with unusual energy. 

Yet after the passage of the new state voter ID law, and amid a series of recent legal twists and turns over its fate, some college students assume it will bar them from voting.

Dartmouth Civics has made every effort to get through to students that it does not. 

“There are so many students saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t think I could vote in New Hampshire anymore,’” Nelson said. “I think there’s just been a lot of confusion about this law change.”

Acceptable IDs for students

The new law gives students options to prove their identity. The list of acceptable forms of ID includes a driver’s license from any U.S. state, a non-driver’s state or municipal ID card, a passport or passport card, or any federally issued identification, such as a U.S. armed services identification card.

Ayotte signs bill barring use of student IDs to vote

The identification must have either an expiration date or a date of issuance, according to Oct. 23 guidance from the Secretary of State’s Office. For voters under 65 years old, an ID card may be used up to five years after its expiration; voters older than 65 are not bound to an expiration date, the guidance states.

New Hampshire residents who don’t have physical access to their government ID can use a photograph of their ID. That option allows college students whose passports or other identification cards are at their parents’ home to present to poll workers a photo of that identification card taken by their parents. 

However, students and other residents who don’t have a government-issued identification card will not be able to vote unless they obtain one first. That can be done at a Division of Motor Vehicles with an appointment.

Hanover Town Clerk Terry Walsh said Dartmouth students have been generally well equipped.

“The vast majority of students who’ve been coming in to register to vote, either now or in the past, are already coming armed with a passport or an out-of-state driver’s license,” Walsh said in an interview. “There were not many who were coming with only a student ID, even in the past. Even in the before times.”

Walsh said the ability for a student to show a photo of their identification on their phone — as well as to use a driver’s license from any state — will help students.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a huge change,” she said, speaking on the impact of the new law. 

And while the Secretary of State’s Office has promoted the option for students to obtain a non-driver’s identification card from the Division for Motor Vehicles, and get a waiver from the usual $20 fee, Walsh said she had not heard from any student interested in doing so.

Nelson said he has also not heard of any fellow students attempting to obtain a New Hampshire non-driver’s ID card.

What you need to register

Students who are voting for the first time in New Hampshire may need to register to vote at the polls on Election Day. To do that, they will need proof of identity, age, domicile, and citizenship, but they may sign an affidavit attesting to their citizenship if they don’t have documentation. 

When it comes to proving domicile, Dartmouth College and Hanover have a residency verification arrangement to help students: Ahead of Election Day, the college provides the town with a list of its enrolled students and their dormitory arrangement. That allows poll workers to verify a student’s domicile for the purposes of same-day voter registration, even if that student did not bring that documentation, Walsh said.

That arrangement isn’t available to non-student residents of Hanover seeking to register on Election Day, Walsh noted; they will need to bring proof of residency.

“For students, it’s actually easier because we have ways to prove where they live on campus,” she said. “If it’s a voter who’s coming in same day and didn’t happen to bring their copy of their lease or who doesn’t have it on their phone, it can be more difficult for them to get it.” 

In the wake of the April law barring student identification cards, campus groups across the state have sought to update students on what they need to vote. Most of that energy has come from partisan groups, like campus Democrat or Republican organizations, or Turning Point U.S.A., the conservative advocacy group founded by Charlie Kirk, Nelson noted.

For its part, Dartmouth Civics does not endorse political parties or candidates, though the organization has spoken out against Republican state laws seeking to add voting restrictions, including House Bill 323, Nelson said. 

The organization also does not seek to influence where a student votes; volunteers are equally happy to help students register to vote and request and return an absentee ballot in their home state, Nelson added. And with polling indicating a number of neck-and-neck races that could determine control of the U.S. Senate, like Alaska, Maine, Michigan and Texas, many Dartmouth students from those states are opting to vote absentee, Nelson said.

“Folks who are from Nebraska or Kansas or Texas or places like that who in the past may have voted here, are more keen to do mail-in balloting (back home),” he said. 

To reach students, Dartmouth Civics has tried a number of attention-grabbing techniques, from the ice cream trucks to outdoor concerts. On Election Day, the group will run “walking trains” from the student union building to the polling station at Hanover High School to help guide and encourage students to vote, Nelson said. 

“We just say, ‘Hey, do you have a plan?” he said. “Like, if you want the info, we have the info.’”

Back and forth in court

As campus groups have held similar registration drives, the student ID ban itself has suffered wild swings in the courts. 

In August, a voting advocacy group, the Coalition for Open Democracy, sued the state in federal court to strike down the state’s law, arguing it creates a burden on voting that violates the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18, as well as the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The state argues the law does not pose a meaningful burden on voting and advances legitimate state interests of election security and voter confidence. 

US Supreme Court ruling restores NH ban on use of student IDs at polls

Although an Oct. 2 lower court ruling effectively paused enforcement of the law, briefly allowing student ID cards to be considered at the polls, the U.S. Supreme Court moved quickly and reversed that ruling Oct. 22, allowing the ban to fully take effect while the lawsuit continues in the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire. 

In Durham, home to the University of New Hampshire, Town Clerk Rachel Deane said the town has done everything it can to be a resource to voters, including by participating in information sessions on campus throughout October.

“The Town of Durham is ready to help anyone who may be impacted by New Hampshire’s new voter laws,” she wrote in an email. “Our number one priority is ensuring that every person who is legally eligible to vote has the opportunity to do so and we are committed to working with any voter who may need help understanding the requirements to register or cast a ballot.”

Nelson is happy to tout the work he and others have done to educate students. But he said he still opposes the student ID ban, and noted that other colleges and universities might not have such robust efforts. 

“We’re worried about the students who don’t have all of that engagement or (are) trying to figure it out on Election Day,” he said.