This election year, first-time student voters throughout the U.S. may find that voting is not as easy as they thought it would be.

The National Conference of State Legislators reports that since 2003, 34 states have passed voter identification legislation. A majority of the legislation has been passed by Republican-controlled statehouses and these laws will vary from state to state.
Republicans that support this type of legislation have argued that these laws will help stop voter fraud.

According to research conducted by News21, a nonpartisan investigative news project founded in 2000 and funded by the Carnegie-Knight Foundation, 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases and 10 cases of voter impersonation were identified.

In 2000, 146 million people were registered voters, meaning that those 10 cases represent one out of every 15 million voters. The research concluded that based on the small number of cases, voter fraud is “virtually non-existent.”

If voter fraud is not an issue, then why have so many politicians, most of them Republican, make it an issue? Many of these voter identification laws have strict photo identification enforcements. In Tennessee, Indiana, Georgia, Kansas and Pennsylvania, one must have government-issued photo identification to vote.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, about 11 percent of U.S. citizens, which is about 21 million citizens, do not have government-issued photo identification. Many of these people are elderly, poor, minorities or students.

Students who do not drive will not have a driver’s license. Out-of-state students do not usually go through the process of getting in-state identification. These students typically rely on using their student identification cards issued by their college or university to vote.

Tennessee has explicitly banned students from using their student identification, while Pennsylvania’s voter identification laws, currently being challenged in court, allows college identification. However, the student must have a photo, name and expiration date on their card.

Pennsylvania schools are responding by issuing new identification cards with expiration stickers to make them valid.

Blocking the student vote is a good political tactic by the Republican Party. If you look at last election year’s numbers, students had the highest voter turnout since 1972, which was the first election where the voting age was lowered to 18.

The Pew Center for Research reported that in the last three general elections, students gave the Democratic Party a majority of their votes; 66 percent of students voted for Obama last election year.

Still don’t think that these states are trying to suppress voters from voting for President Obama?

“Voter ID, which is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania. Done,” said Mike Turzai, the Pennsylvania state House Republican leader, in June.

Even in Illinois, Republicans have been trying to pass voter identification law legislation. On Sept. 26, the Chicago Tribune reported that the legislation is still pending. The two bills were filed by state Rep. Dwight Kay and state Sen. Kyle McCarter, respectfully.

It is important to recognize that although these Voter ID laws do set up barriers for certain voters, it should not deter students from voting. That is exactly what Republican lawmakers would like the students to do, and they should not give in to their agenda.