University of North Carolina Chapel Hill students will no longer be able to use their mobile student IDs to vote after an appellate court ruling against the State Board of Elections on Friday evening.
In late August, the State Board of Elections approved UNC-Chapel Hill’s request to include its Mobile UNC One Cards as a valid form of voter ID.
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By law, the state board is responsible for approving or denying student and employee IDs for voting, based on certain criteria. The board must approve student IDs if:
- They include photos taken by the institution or its agents or contractors;
- They are issued only after an enrollment process that includes methods of confirming a student’s identity, like their citizenship status, birth date or Social Security number;
- They have expiration dates;
- The equipment used to produce IDs is kept in a secure location;
- The issuing institution provides copies of the standard ID cards to the State Board for training purposes; and
- The chancellor, president or registrar of the institution submits a signed letter to the State Board executive director explaining how their ID card meets the requirements.
Mobile UNC One Cards are digital IDs kept on a UNC student’s phone or electronic device. They were the first digital IDs ever approved by the State Board.
However, the two Republicans on the five-member board objected to the approval, arguing that digital IDs were not acceptable under current law, which does not mention digital IDs.
The three Democrats responded that the law doesn’t specifically define “card,” which suggests that physical or digital IDs that meet the stated criteria should be accepted.
The North Carolina Republican Party and Republican National Committee sued the State Board three weeks after its mobile ID approval. The Democratic National Committee and the Affirmative Action Coalition joined the Board as defendants.
On Sept. 20, the Wake County Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory ruled in favor of the State Board, agreeing with their interpretation of the statute.
“I don’t think that when you go to an undergraduate institution such as UNC … that they give you an ID and then you say, well, I want to vote and you’ve done everything you’re supposed to do as far as registering and then we say now you can’t vote because we don’t think this fits the standard of voting,” Gregory said.
UNC Mobile One Cards are the default ID provided to students upon enrollment. Due to the ongoing litigation, UNC is allowing students who want a physical student ID card in order to vote to visit the One Card office to get one for free. Physical cards previously cost $10.
After the superior court’s decision, the RNC and North Carolina Republican Party appealed to the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
They argued that since the statute did not mention digital IDs, the law was not intended to include them. They also shared concerns that tech-savvy bad actors could trick poll workers with fraudulent IDs.
Defendants argued that there was no stated tangibility requirement, and that digital IDs were not simply photos on a mobile device, but more technologically advanced. They also objected to the North Carolina Republican Party and RNC waiting to sue until three weeks after the State Board’s approval, just months before Election Day.
Friday, the appellate court unanimously reversed the superior court’s decision, barring UNC Mobile One cards — or any other digital IDs — from being used to vote in the upcoming election.
The court sided with the Republican argument that a digital ID is equivalent to an “image of a photo ID, either as a photocopy or a photo on a mobile device,” which are prevented from acceptance by the State Board in a 2023 memo.
The State Board of Elections has not appealed the decision to the State Supreme Court, and did not respond to a request for comment.
Digital ID ruling reaction
When UNC’s digital ID was first approved, Western Carolina University political science professor Christopher Cooper told Carolina Public Press that the struggle represented a fault line around elections: Republicans tend to favor what they view as security, while Democrats weigh access more heavily.
“In some ways, this is the bleeding edge of questions about voter ID,” Cooper said.
“It illustrates why this is a more complicated policy to implement than it seems at first blush. I mean, it sounds obvious — show an ID and you get to vote — but I think, as we’re seeing, there’s a lot of questions that come up for what constitutes a valid ID, and I think those questions are only going to grow in North Carolina and in other states as electronic IDs become more popular.”
UNC Young Democrats President Sloan Duvall called Republicans “scared” for trying to fight digital student IDs.
“They don’t want young people in North Carolina voting because the NC GOP has put out the most anti-young person slate of candidates ever,” she said.
North Carolina Republican Party spokesperson Matt Mercer celebrated the court decision Friday in a social media post.
“Promise kept. HUGE Voter ID win!” he wrote.
North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons shared the sentiment.
“When the NC State Board of Elections exceeds their statutory authority, we will use every available option to ensure elections in this state are safe,” he said in a social media post. “Today’s Digital ID decision is a win for the people of North Carolina and for the rule of law.”
Meanwhile, North Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton criticized the decision and its timing, right as flooding from Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina.
“(O)n a day when the state was hit with some of the hardest flooding in recent history, the (R)epublicans in North Carolina chose to focus on blocking access for students on UNC’s campus to use their digital student ID as valid voter IDs,” she said in a social media post.
Early voting begins in less than three weeks, on Oct. 17. It will be the first general election in which North Carolina’s voter ID law is in effect.
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