Two Ways North Carolina Republicans Plan To Keep College Students From Voting
By Ian Millhiser on Jul 19, 2013 at 12:00 pm
(Credit: AP) Two months after the Republican-led North Carolina House approved a voter ID bill, a common tactic used to reduce turnout among low-income, student and minority voters, Republicans in the state senate, however, apparently believe this bill does not go far enough in making it difficult for college students, who tend to vote for Democrats, to cast a ballot. According to the Charlotte Observer, senate Republicans plan to eliminate half of the forms of ID a person can show in order to cast a ballot under the house bill — including “cards from UNC system colleges [and] state community colleges.”
This is at least the second proposal by Republicans in the state that would move the electorate rightward by making it harder for college students to vote. In April, State Rep. Bill Cook (R-NC) introduced a bill that would raise taxes on families with college students if their child registered to vote in the town where they attend school rather than the town where their parents live. In other words, the bill would discourage college students from registering to vote in the community where they actually live and spend the majority of their time by imposing a financial penalty on their family if they do so.
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