Associated Press: Lawsuits aim to ease rules limiting Wisconsin college voters
Jay Heck, the executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, argues that Wisconsin’s ID requirements for young people violate their constitutional rights, forcing them to “jump through more hoops unnecessarily” than other citizens.
At UW-Madison, Wisconsin’s largest university, student ID cards known as WisCards are not compliant with state laws for voting. Among the 13 four-year UW System schools, only four use student IDs that are also voter compliant. To comply with the law, UW System campuses offer separate voter IDs to students upon request.
Heck said Republican lawmakers appear to have designed the requirements to discourage students from turning out at the polls.
“Obviously a lot of college students are Republican, but their calculation is that more college students would likely vote for Democrats,” he said, adding the requirement “does give (Republicans) a partisan advantage.”