North Carolina's voter ID law, which requires would-be voters to display an acceptable form of government-issued voter ID in order to cast a ballot, went into effect for the first time in last night's primary. Early voting behaviors offered a first look at some of the problems that come with these voting restrictions, reports ThinkProgress. Namely, how young people are being blocked from voting.
According to ThinkProgress, many college students do not have acceptable forms of ID, and are part of the hundreds of thousands of the state's registered voters who are penalized by this requirement.
ThinkProgress reports:
Bob Hall, the executive director of Democracy North Carolina, told ThinkProgress that the voter protection hotline is receiving many calls, “disproportionately from young people and students,” who are being told they do not have acceptable ID, so they have to “go through the maze of filling out forms” and provisional ballots. Those ballots run the risk of being challenged and not being counted.
"We had 100 years of pushing away people from the polls,” Hall said about North Carolina. “It was really only in the early 21st century, after 2000, that our participation started to come up, and now we’re going right back to this message of ‘elections are not for you.’”
The law is being challenged in state and federal courts. Read more here.
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