Wisconsin Student Newspaper: ‘Can Students Vote?’ With Voter ID Law

You know the thought of disenfranchising young voters is serious when the student newspaper runs this headline: “Can students vote in the next election?”

Frightening, right?

Unfortunately, in states like Wisconsin, where the aforementioned story ran, that’s a serious question.

The UWM Post, an independent weekly newspaper for the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee community, was forced to address the issue of students’ voting rights after the state Legislature passed one of the nation’s most restrictive Voter ID laws.

Students face a direct threat as the state’s law only accepts a certain kind of student IDs; none of the IDs used in the University of Wisconsin system currently qualify.

At the Milwaukee campus, more than 9,000 students—nearly a third of the school’s enrollment—could be disenfranchised by the law, according to studies cited by the UWM Post. The newspaper’s estimates are based on enrollment figures and statistics for driver’s license-carrying young Americans. They report:

Based on previous studies, The UWM Post estimates that 9,179 students, approximately 30 percent of the campus, do not have valid, state-issued driver’s licenses, a prerequisite to voting in upcoming elections.

Black students ages 18 to 24 will be impacted most by the Voter ID Bill, on average being 27.5 percent less likely than white students to have a Wisconsin driver license, according to a 2005 study conducted by UWM’s Employment and Training Institute.

The UWM Post showed the impact of the Voter ID law on students with the graphic above—showing the number of students without a state-issue driver’s license compared with enrollment for different demographics.

While some students may have other forms of state-issued IDs, many students enroll from out-of-state but are still entitled to vote where they attend school. And if the school IDs aren’t valid, out-of-staters likely won’t have another form of Wisconsin ID.

University of Wisconsin officials have been exploring ways to update student IDs before elections; in order to comply with the law, student IDs must have an issue date, an expiration date, and the student’s signature. Officials told The UWM Post that stickers with the necessary information are a likely solution.

Julio Guerrero, the chair of the Latino Caucus of the state’s Democratic Party and a junior at the University of Wisconsin, told the paper that both Latino voters and students would be impacted.

“In my opinion, it is like a poll-tax, and I think it affects our community negatively,” Guerrero said.

Brian Stewart is the journalism and online communications manager at Campus Progress.

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