University of North Carolina students can use university-issued digital IDs on their phones to get into sporting events, the dining hall, and now, the voting booth.
In a 3-2 party line vote, the North Carolina State Board of Elections approved the Mobile UNC One Card as an acceptable form of voter identification at its Aug. 20 meeting. While the board accepts about 70 student IDs across the state, this is the first approved digital ID since voter ID requirements were implemented in 2023.
Republican board members Stacy Eggers and Kevin Lewis voted against approval.
“What we're being asked to approve here is an identification on a mobile app, and a mobile app is not an identification card,” Eggers said during the meeting.
The board’s Democratic members disagreed, saying the voter ID statute is flexible enough to consider a digital card as acceptable as a physical card.
“If a young person uses a credit card to buy groceries on their phone from their Apple wallet, they're still using a credit card,” board member Siobhan Miller said. “We still would call it a credit card, so I think the form that it's in is not really the important thing.”
With mere months before the November election, not much time remains to challenge the board’s decision for this cycle. But the issue isn’t going away, Western Carolina University Political Science Professor Christopher Cooper told Carolina Public Press.
Republicans have made their opposition to digital voter IDs clear, and could bring litigation or draw up legislation to reverse the decision down the line.
“Death, taxes and election litigation — those are the three things we know will happen in the state of North Carolina,” Cooper said.
"Death taxes and election litigation — those are three things we know will happen in the state of North Carolina."Christopher Cooper, Western Carolina University political science professor“So yes, I think we will see challenges, and were the Republicans to take over the State Board of Elections by winning the governorship or through other means, I would imagine this would be one of the first policies they would want to look at again.”
Debate framed as access versus security
After the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the state’s voter ID law in 2023, UNC Young Democrats President Sloan Duvall said the group wanted to make voting as accessible as possible for students.
It’s “one less barrier” for a population that may not have a North Carolina drivers license that matches their college residency, she said. The UNC Young Democrats communicated with administration and pushed the chancellor’s office to advocate for digital voter IDs to the State Board of Elections.
State Sen. Mujtaba Mohammed, D-Mecklenburg, told CPP on Monday that the future of voting is about “inclusion, not exclusion.”
“Voting should be about empowering people at the end of the day, not entangling them with bureaucratic red tape,” he said. “Whether it's a physical ID or a digital ID, if it meets the law, it should be accepted.”
The Mobile UNC One Card includes a photo of the student and an expiration date, and is only issued after an enrollment process that includes uploading other forms of identification, like the students’ birthdate and their drivers license or passport.
The digital ID software stores data in a cloud-based center secured by the same system that produces chips in physical IDs, according to the official request form submitted to the State Board. It uses the same technology as credit and debit card chips. The only people who can alter a credential are personnel of the vendor whose secure data practices UNC’s data governance and privacy offices have approved.
The statute does not mention digital IDs, but also does not define “card” or explicitly say they must be physical.
During last week's board meeting, Republican board member Kevin Lewis said, just like the digital North Carolina drivers licenses recently approved by the General Assembly, approving digital IDs ought to require a clear addition to the statute.
“I keep a card in my wallet, not an app on my phone,” Lewis said. “I think this is some activist rulemaking or lawmaking going above and beyond the statute. As the courts have told us, over and over again when they're looking at statutes, the language of this statute doesn't require any interpretation, it just requires adherence.”
A statement by the North Carolina Republican Party said there are “numerous issues” with the digital ID.
“Our chairman has called this the most partisan state board of elections we've ever seen because their lip service to serious election integrity concerns is frustrating to anyone who values fairness in the administration of elections,” the statement read.
Duvall said Republicans are “scared.”
“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.
Students are passionate about issues like student loan debt, climate change, gun safety and reproductive rights, and former president Donald Trump does not share their priorities, Duvall said. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is running for governor, “is a candidate who vilifies all types of North Carolinians, LGBTQ people, women,” she added.
“Young people are not going to be voting for him.”
Duvall also mentioned Republican U.S. House member and attorney general candidate Dan Bishop and superintendent of public instruction candidate Michelle Morrow as people whom young voters will likely oppose at the polls.
“Republicans in North Carolina know that," Duvall said. "So when they see another barrier removed for voting for young people, of course, they're going to, under the guise of election integrity, say that this is a bad decision.”
The framing of the issue as security, which Republicans typically favor, versus access, which Democrats promote, is a typical election fault line, Cooper said,
“Now, some folks would argue that that's a false choice, that you could get both — you can get security and access — but unfortunately, in the pure politics of it, that's often the way it plays out,” he said.
Will digital ID voting decision be challenged?
While Republicans have not yet announced any plans to challenge the State Board’s decision, many believe it’s inevitable.
State Sen. Warren Daniel, R-Burke, one of the primary sponsors of the voter ID bill, said in a statement to CPP that digital IDs were not “readily available” in 2018, when the bill first passed.
“Whether digital IDs are secure enough to be considered valid forms of voter ID is a decision for the legislature to make, not three unelected, partisan bureaucrats,” Daniel said.
“The State Board of Elections continues to disregard election security, overstep its authority and circumvent the legislative process. The board’s decision this week is just the latest example of why we need to have a truly bipartisan board of elections.”
The majority Republican legislature’s attempt to change the makeup of the State Board of Elections to an even party split, as well as strip the governor’s appointment power, is the subject of ongoing litigation.
Sen. Mohammed said he wouldn’t be surprised if the General Assembly called lawmakers back into session to alter the voter ID law to clarify the issue. He said he’s worked with Republicans on election bills before and will do so again.
“I'm happy to have a discussion with the other side of the aisle, because I fundamentally believe in preserving and protecting access to the ballot,” he said.
“I don't care if you're a Republican, a Democrat, young, old, Black, white, whatever you are. If you are an American and you are a U.S. citizen, you have a right to vote.”
Republicans could also sue the State Board of Elections over the decision, but Cooper said that’s less likely. He said the UNC digital ID is only the start of a much longer debate about voter ID.
“It's going to add some fuel to the fire, in that it's yet another example of disagreement between the two major parties about how we run elections,” Cooper said. “ But at the end of the day, this is a relatively small number of people who are going to offer that ID as their only ID.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.