Re: Students can no longer vote in N.H. using school-issued IDs
In a February interview, University of New Hampshire professor Kenneth Johnson told The Dartmouth that “New Hampshire has one of the oldest populations in the United States.” The student population of the state acts as a critical counterweight to the aging demographic, advocating for policies important to young people and sharing an underrepresented voice in New Hampshire’s political sphere.
Younger people tend to vote more progressively. In a state where both legislative chambers are dominated by conservative representatives and the governor’s mansion is home to a Republican, this attack on the student and youth vote is not a coincidence. It is a direct attempt to subvert and disenfranchise the will of the young people of New Hampshire.
As Dartmouth government professor Herschel Nachlis pointed out in the article, the 2016 Senate election between now-Gov. Kelly Ayotte and now-Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., was separated by a margin of 0.14%, or 1,017 votes, for Hassan. Dartmouth’s total undergraduate enrollment was 4,310 in 2016. Even if only a quarter of Dartmouth undergrads voted in the 2016 Senate general election, that would have been enough to flip the Senate seat. Our votes matter.
Passports are a luxury — as of late 2024, only 51% of Americans held one — costing at least $180. Not every student has a driver’s license, which can be due to various barriers, including financial and medical. It can be hard to obtain or even be aware of other forms of government ID.
Our Dartmouth IDs are our campus house keys, meal wallets and physical representations of our identity as students of this College. They should be sufficient to identify us as voters eligible to perform our civic duty.
Letters to the Editor represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
