NC elections officials approve digital voter ID option for UNC students

Students at UNC-Chapel Hill will have an easier time voting this year after the State Board of Elections approved another acceptable form of voter photo identification Tuesday, allowing UNC's digital student IDs to be used in voting.

Republican members of the board opposed the change, but they were out-voted by the Democratic majority in a party-line 3-2 vote.

The decision comes a week after the board approved a number of other IDs, including state and local government IDs as well as IDs from Duke and Campbell universities. The state now has well over 100 approved forms of ID for use by voters.

The decisions last week were unanimous; Republicans said their opposition to the UNC IDs was that they disliked the idea of allowing any digital IDs.

That stance could portend a future debate that's likely to affect the entire state, not just one college campus. The North Carolina legislature recently passed a law allowing for digital driver's licenses. They're not expected to be ready and approved in time for this year's elections, but they could be in use for the 2025 municipal elections, the 2026 midterms or other future elections.

This November's elections will be the first major test of the state's 2018 voter ID law, which had been ruled unconstitutional or otherwise held up in court for years. Following a 2022 court ruling in which the new Republican majority of the state Supreme Court reversed the 2021 ruling by a then-Democratic majority holding that voter ID was racially discriminatory and unconstitutional, the ID rules were used in the 2023 municipal elections and the primary elections this March.

Few problems were reported either time, but both elections saw only a fraction of the state's registered voters participate. It's still to be seen how smoothly the broader rollout this November will go.

State law dictates that everyone should be allowed to fill out a ballot if they show up at the polls, even if they don't have an ID. But the state doesn't have to count those ballots; the voters will be asked to either come back with a valid ID or to fill out a form explaining why they don't have one. Their votes will be counted if their excuse is acceptable — and county elections officials can only reject the person's vote if the local board of elections votes unanimously to do so.

In the primary this March, 473 voters had their ballots thrown out because of ID problems, WRAL reported. That was out of 1.8 million total voters.