HANOVER — Dartmouth College students say they’re concerned a new New Hampshire law that prevents voters from using student IDs to identify themselves at the polls is part of a broader push to restrict voters’ rights, though the law’s proponents frame it as a way to increase election security.
While driver’s licenses, non-driver licenses, passports, birth certificates and armed services IDs will remain acceptable forms of identification for voters at New Hampshire polling places, students who previously leaned on their school IDs will need to change course when the law goes into effect in June.
“A big part of this change that we’re concerned about is students might barely have enough time to learn about the candidates they want to vote for, let alone have to go through all these hoops and barriers to cast their ballots,” said Will Nelson, co-president of the Dartmouth Civics Student Association, a student group that works to provide resources for civic engagement and voting.
Nelson feels that election participation is high in Hanover and any limitations on that could prove harmful.
“We were already disappointed to see the affidavit system go away with HB1569 because many students don’t think to carry more than one citizenship document with them,” said Nelson, referring to a previous law that allowed for an alternate ballot for those without proper identification.
Bea Reichman, a third-year student and president of the Dartmouth College Democrats, worries that this decision by the Legislature was in an effort to limit and suppress youth voters.
“It just feels like an attempt to limit student representation,” Reichman said Tuesday by phone. “…We deserve a voice in elections. We live here.”
While all 11 sponsors of HB323 are Republican legislators, including Donald McFarlane, of Grafton, Reichman does not consider this to be a partisan issue, but rather a “financial and bureaucratic barrier” that affects students in any party, particularly those who are without a driver’s license or passport.
Proponents of the bill, however, argue that HB323 creates a consistent pathway to voting that applies to all eligible citizens in the U.S.
“HB 323 is about voter confidence,” McFarlane said in a Wednesday email. “It sets one clear, uniform standard to obtain a ballot: government-issued photo ID.”
McFarlane foresees more clarity for voters, consistency for election officials and a stronger public confidence once the law goes into effect.
Despite the large portion of students in college towns on the New Hampshire side of the Upper Valley, neither the schools nor the municipalities have a gauge for how exactly many people will be impacted by a new law eliminating the use of student IDs as identification at the polls.
The Secretary of State’s Office does not keep track of student ID use for elections, Anna Sventek, a spokeswoman, said Wednesday by email.
When it comes to the frequency of the use of student IDs in Hanover, Town Clerk Tracy Walsh is unsure.
“I can’t answer that because we don’t track it. I couldn’t tell you how many people use their passport versus use a driver’s license,” she said Tuesday by phone.
Walsh has been town clerk of Hanover since 2023, and volunteered at the polls before then. Students can get non-driver IDs or voting IDs from the DMV, which provides an acceptable paper version for the day of an election, she said.
“I do not anticipate, here in Hanover, it having much impact,” said Walsh.
Nelson, however, pointed out that the nearest DMV is in Newport 30 minutes from campus, which could prove difficult for students without transportation.
The vast majority of people, possibly over 90%, in New London vote with a license, Town Clerk Will Kidder said. He added that while HB323 will certainly affect some people in the state, he does not foresee it changing things for New London.
“I would be surprised if we didn’t get a similar number of people because my guess is that most of these people do, in fact, have driver’s licenses.”
While the balance of the new law could bring more security to New Hampshire elections, Kidder doesn’t consider student IDs much of a problem to begin with.
“To my estimation, it wasn’t a huge gaping hole that a million people were running through to try to vote,” said Kidder.
Kidder, who has been registering voters for six years, has never seen a school ID in his clerk office. However, students don’t typically register there. There are registration drives on the Colby Sawyer campus ahead of elections, where Kidder said students may be more likely to use their IDs.
“Anytime you do something that causes less people to vote, that’s not a great thing,” said Kidder.
In the wake of the law’s enactment, the Dartmouth Votes Coalition involving student groups, staff and the Town of Hanover is working to educate current and incoming students to make the new law a “non-issue” for those who want to participate in elections.
“With this new bill, we will refocus our efforts and double down our efforts,” said Ed McKenna, director of Civic Expression, Engagement and Learning at Dartmouth, referring to information sessions, registration drives, flyers and social media posts coming this spring.
“We traditionally have very high engagement for presidential elections. It’s a little lower for midterms and I would say for town elections, it’s much lower,” McKenna said Tuesday by phone.
For Dartmouth students in 2020, the last presidential election with data available, about 4,600 of the 6,200 students registered to vote, with 4,100 actually voting. In 2022, only about 2,500 students voted, despite the population rising to nearly 7,000 students at Dartmouth, according to Tufts data.
Colby-Sawyer, which has about 900 students, also has registration events on campus ahead of elections, said Olivia Merrill, the school’s assistant director of Citizenship Education. While her office does not have data on student participation in elections, she estimates about 10 to 15 people register during each of the two events typically held before an election.
