By By: ALICIA FLORES
Staff Writer
aaflores@umail.iu.edu
If you have registered to vote in the upcoming presidential primary, you may have some issues if you try using your student identification card as a voter identification card when it’s time to vote.
According to Indiana’s voter ID law, voters need to have an ID with an expiration date and unfortunately IU South Bend’s IDs do not meet this requirement.
According to Public Law 1099-2005, your photo ID must meet four requirements to be eligible for voting. In short, the ID must have your photo, your name, an expiration date and be issued by the State of Indiana or U.S. government.
IUSB’s IDs have an issue date but no expiration date which makes them ineligible. The resolution to this issue could be as simple as adding expiration dates, said senior Rachel Santos, president of the IUSB Political Science Club.
“By adding an expiration date to our state issued student IDs, students would be able to use them at their polling places on Election Day,” Santos said. “We have many professors on campus who are advocating to add expiration dates, but as far as I know nothing had been done to change this flaw.”
With the full parking lots on campus, many students may be unaware of this issue. Those students likely have driver’s licenses, which do meet the requirements to act as a voter ID in Indiana.
“Some students might not consider this a big deal because they have driver’s licenses or another state issued ID,” Santos said. “However, it is important to make voting as easy as possible. In my opinion voter ID laws are just another way to ostracize voters. Think about it—What is the demographic of people who do not have a drivers license?”
According to StateMaster.com, Indiana is ranked number 14 on total number of licensed drivers in the state.
“By our university failing to put expiration dates on our student IDs we have become part of the problem,” said Santos. “If we can add a chip to everyone’s student ID, we can add an expiration date.”
There are other Indiana colleges that meet these requirements, Ball State University along with Purdue University are two that have been confirmed with having the expiration dates.
Indiana’s primary will take place May 3. The deadline to register to vote in the primary was April 4.
