Leaders from technical colleges in Wisconsin are asking for the reconsideration of the implementation of a controversial voter ID law that exclude technical college IDs from eligibility in state elections.
In a letter to the Government Accountability Board, Wisconsin Technical College System President Daniel Clancy condemned the decision not to include technical college IDs in the new Voter ID Law. While tech college IDs can be used to register to vote, he said students cannot currently use them to receive their ballots.
The law stipulates voters must provide an acceptable photo identification in order to obtain a ballot, GAB spokesperson Reid Magney said in an email to The Badger Herald.
Acceptable Identifications include a drivers license, state ID card, military ID, passport and a college or university student ID, so long as the student ID includes the student’s name, signature, photo, the date the card was issued, the date it expires and if the card has not expired, Magney said. The card cannot be used if it was issued two years before the date of the election, he said.
Magney said the original legislation went through a “soft implementation” policy last spring before the statewide recall elections. People were required to show a photo ID at the recall polls, and if they had none, they were handed a sheet of information regarding the new law.
Acceptable IDs, Magney said, included drivers licenses, Wisconsin state IDs and passports, among others. Student IDs were not in the original version of the bill but were added before the it was passed.
An amendment had been offered to add technical college IDs to the list of acceptable identifications, Magney said, but this was not passed. This was interpreted by the GAB as evidence of legislative intent that technical college IDs were not allowed, he said.
The GAB issued an opinion that putting a university-issued sticker and a student signature, an issuance date and an expiration date would allow university IDs to be considered acceptable forms of IDs under the law, Magney said.
Student IDs from University
of Wisconsin System schools and most private schools will be valid to obtain ballots with stickers, Magney said. The technical schools, however, are excluded from this exemption.
Clancy said the language of the law suggests a technical school ID could be used in an election.
“The plain language of the statute clearly includes technical college student IDs as an acceptable form of identification for voting purposes,” Clancy said in the letter.
Clancy noted the discrepancy between the voting rights of technical college students versus students in other higher education institutions in the state. He echoed the sentiments of Mid-State Technical College President Sue Budjac, who believes the legislation to be imbalanced.
Magney said the amendment would apply to any institutions that uses student IDs, including UW-System schools and most private schools; however, because the legislation did not specifically name technical colleges in its wording, they were not included.
Another amendment was made during debates on the legislation to include technical colleges specifically in the list, but that amendment did not pass, Magney said.
Members of Wisconsin Technical College System are disappointed over the new amendment. Budjac said it will have “an exceptionally negative effect on MSTC students.”
Budjac said the Higher Learning Commission of the Northcentral Association of Colleges accredits all Wisconsin’s technical colleges on the same standards as it does UW-System schools.
She added she views the interpretation as unfair to technical colleges.
“This unexpected interpretation of the law was made without consultation with technical college leadership or boards,” Budjac said. “We urge the GAB to revisit the Sept. 12 decision and allow Wisconsin’s technical college students to use their IDs to vote.”
In the original article it was stated that a recent legislative amendment from the GAB prevents technical college IDs from being an acceptable form of identification for receiving a ballot. This is not true, as the GAB is charged with administering the legislation and cannot propose legislation, merely interpret it.The Legislature did not include technical College IDs, not the GAB. The original article failed to clarify this, as well as the GAB’s issued opinion that allowed University IDs to be accepted as Identifications under guidelines stated above. The original article also said that the student IDs were not on the original list of acceptable IDs. However, student IDs had been added before the original passage of the bill, which was not stated in the article. The original article also failed to acknowledge a previous amendment which would have included Technical college IDs in the state. This was not passed, which the GAB understood as a legislative intent to exclude technical college IDs. These changes have been made in the online version of the article. The Badger Herald regrets these errors.
