OPINION: New election law claims first victims: legit voters

This editorial was published in The Idaho Statesman of Boise.

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A law meant to stop voters from registering at the polls with “a scuba diving card and an Amazon box” has claimed its first victims: legitimate Idaho voters.

As the Idaho Statesman’s Ian Max Stevenson reported, dozens of people have been prevented from voting this year because of a law passed by the Idaho Legislature in 2023 limiting what qualifies as valid ID to establish identity.

The valid forms of ID to vote in Idaho are a current Idaho driver’s license, an Idaho identification card, a passport or federal ID, a tribal identification card, or an enhanced or concealed carry weapons license.

The law eliminated student IDs and photo IDs from the list of valid forms of identification.

Concealed carry license, yes. Student ID, no.

That means people who have recently moved to Idaho and still have their valid driver’s license from another state are getting turned away.

It’s worth pointing out that the new law likely would disproportionately affect recent transplants from California, who tend to be Republican voters.

Seniors who have moved into a senior living facility and no longer have a valid driver’s license also are seeing problems.

“It feels like I am denying legitimate citizens who have proved residency the ability to vote because of this strict ID requirement,” Ada County Clerk Trent Tripple told the Statesman.

One of the bill’s sponsors was Rep. Brandon Mitchell, R-Moscow, who said there was “a flaw” with same-day registration that “would allow me to vote with a scuba diving card and an Amazon box.”

Democrats went along with it, ostensibly because it included the stamp of approval from Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, a Republican who is respected and trusted by people from both sides of the aisle.

The bill, House Bill 340, passed 59-4 in the House and 23-12 in the Senate with little to no debate in either chamber or in committee.

While the main focus of the bill was getting rid of student IDs as a form of identification, no mention was made of the effect it would have on new residents who still have their out-of-state licenses.

Mitchell himself testified that only 120 people used a student ID to register to vote in the previous election, a minuscule number. But the Republican Party’s obsession with “illegal voting” based on Donald Trump’s big lie that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen has no bounds, regardless of how many legitimate voters they disenfranchise along the way.

The bill was passed in 2023 but is probably coming to light now because of the heavy turnout for the presidential election.

So where was the education campaign to remind voters that their out-of-state licenses would no longer be accepted as a valid form of identification?

It’s another stark reminder that legislators — and apparently the secretary of state — need to do a better job of forecasting the negative impacts of their decisions.

TNS