BOISE, Idaho — A new prohibition on the use of student IDs to vote has already attracted two lawsuits, just two days after Gov. Brad Little signed the bill into law.
March for Our Lives Idaho, a gun safety advocacy group, on Friday filed a complaint in federal court against Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane over a law that bans using student IDs to vote. Babe Vote, a youth-led organization that helps register young people to vote, announced on Friday that it had also filed a lawsuit against the state over the bill, in state court.
In a complaint filed on Friday, March for Our Lives alleged that the law banning student IDs unconstitutionally discriminated against young people, who are likely to be students. A Boise High student, Rosaura Albizo Barron, was also a plaintiff on the lawsuit.
The Babe Vote lawsuit, filed in concert with the League of Women Voters, alleges the law violates the Idaho Constitution.
At a news briefing Friday, 18-year-old Babe Vote volunteer Saumya Sarin said the legislation makes the organization’s voter registration work more difficult and discourages young people from voting.
“There is no need for (House Bill 124), and the Legislature knows it,” she said. “Idaho’s secretary of state told the Legislature that there has been no voting fraud associated with student IDs.”
McGrane supported the student ID law, having told lawmakers that only 104 voters used student IDs to cast their ballots. But he also said he supported another bill that would require the state to provide free voter ID cards for people without another proper form of voter ID. Lawmakers have yet to pass that bill.
The Republican-dominated Legislature is also considering a bill to eliminate the ability to sign a voter affidavit, in place of showing a personal ID card.
Sarin said Babe Vote has succeeded at increasing voter turnout among young people. Since 2018, she said Idaho has seen a 66% increase in voter registration for people between ages 18 and 19.
“This legislation sends a dangerous message to young voters,” she said. “We should be doing everything we can to get more young people voting, not creating burdens for them.”
Two other bills curtailing how new voters can prove their residency got closer to becoming law Friday.
House Bill 126 would require residents to use a limited list of documents to show proof of residency and proof of identification to register to vote. The bill would also give voters — including students — who don’t drive the option of receiving a free four-year ID from the Idaho Department of Transportation, which could be used to prove a resident’s identity.
McGrane said Idaho law is currently inconsistent by requiring one kind of identification to register to vote and a different kind to cast your vote on Election Day.
Currently, residents can use multiple documents to prove their residency, which GOP Rep. Brandon Mitchell told the House State Affairs Committee on Friday could include a scuba diving instructor ID card or a box mailed to a person with their address on it.
To vote, Idaho law allows the use of a driver’s license, U.S. passport or federal photo ID, tribal photo ID or concealed weapons permit.
The new bill would align the different requirements by restricting the documents that can be used when registering.
Other inconsistencies exist between types of registration. If you register online with an Idaho driver’s license, for example, you don’t have to show proof of residency in person. But if you register by mail with the same license, you do. The new law would make online registrants also show in-person proof.
“This has been a very important piece of legislation for this office,” McGrane told a House committee on Friday. “When we talk about photo identification and voting, we actually have two different standards in the state and it confuses people. Almost every time I talk to legislators, it gets confused about what identification we’re talking about.”
Sam Sandmire, a Boise resident, told legislators that she volunteers on campaigns to help people register to vote, and that the new requirements would make it more burdensome for people to become voters.
“The problem with this bill is it takes away some of the IDs that were formerly acceptable to register,” she said.
Lawmakers on the House committee referred the bill for amendments. McGrane told The Idaho Statesman by phone on Friday that he expects to reintroduce the bill with minor changes.
A second bill, House Bill 137, would remove another option for voters on Election Day, which is to sign an affidavit at the polls swearing their identities if they don’t have valid forms of ID.
Although used by only a small portion of voters, supporters say it is a backstop that allows voters to cast their ballots even when they’ve forgotten their ID at home.
The bill’s sponsor, GOP Rep. Joe Alfieri, told the House State Affairs Committee on Friday that he was worried about people lying on the affidavit.
“I think that’s very loose,” Alfieri said. “We require some form of identification for virtually everything else that we do in society.”
Sandmire at the committee meeting said the affidavit is “the only backstop that someone has if they have issues at the polls,” noting that she knows a student who used an affidavit to vote once when she forgot her purse at her grandmother’s house, several counties away.
“It is illegal to fill out an affidavit fraudulently, and there’s jail time and there are huge fines,” she said. “People are not going to do that. We should be encouraging people to vote, not suppressing their votes.”
According to the secretary of state’s office, 0.4% of voters used an affidavit to vote in 2022, which was about 2,400 people. Close to 99% of voters used a driver’s license.
Another bill, House Bill 259, outlawing election officials from providing unrequested absentee ballots or absentee ballot applications passed the House on Friday.
Another bill that House Bill 205, which would have gotten rid of absentee voting without a particular reason — like serving in the military, being disabled, or attending a university — died in the House on Monday.
