RALEIGH, NC — The Republican Party filed a lawsuit Thursday against the North Carolina Board of Elections seeking to prevent students and employees at the state’s flagship public university from providing digital identification in order to comply with a relatively new photo voter ID law.
The Republican National Committee and North Carolina filed the lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court, three weeks after the Democratic majority was achieved on the State Board of Elections. has approved the “Mobile UNC One Card” generated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a qualifying ID.
The law says that qualifying IDs must meet various photo and security requirements to be approved by the board. UNC-Chapel Hill’s digital ID, which is voluntary for students and staff and available on Apple phones, marks the qualification of the first such ID posted from a person’s smartphone.
The Republican groups said state law clearly requires that several categories of permissible identification — from driver’s licenses to U.S. passports and college and military IDs — be provided only in physical form.
The law does not allow the state board to “expand the circumstances of what constitutes an acceptable student card from a tangible, physical item to something that can only be found on a computer system,” the lawsuit says.
The state and national GOP allege in the lawsuit that the board’s unilateral expansion of photo ID requirements before registering and accepting voters at polling places could allow “hundreds or thousands of ineligible voters” to vote in the November election and beyond. North Carolina is a presidential battleground state where statewide races are typically very close.
An electronically stored photo ID may be easier to alter than a physical card and harder for a police officer to check, even if there are problems with the computer network, the lawsuit said. The groups also filed a separate request for a judge to issue a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction barring the use of the mobile ID.
In response to an email seeking comment on the lawsuit, a spokesperson for the state council on Thursday evening referred to the discussion the council had at its Aug. 20 meeting.
A council attorney said during the meeting that there was nothing in the law that specifically limited approval to printed cards. Council Chairman Alan Hirsch, a Democrat, cited trends in technology to give the ID its approval, saying that airline passengers now show their boarding passes from their smartphones.
The current voter identification law was initially approved in late 2018But it was not implemented until the Municipal elections 2023 while legal challenges continued.
The board has approved more than 130 traditional student and employee IDs as qualifying for voting in 2024, including UNC-Chapel Hill’s physical One Card. Anyone who cannot provide a qualifying ID will cast a provisional ballot and either fill out an exception form or provide ID before the vote count is complete. In-person early voting begins Oct. 17.
People who vote by mail are also asked to include a copy of their ID in their envelope. An administration official said UNC-Chapel Hill voters with the One Card can now insert a photocopy of the One Card into their phone to fulfill the requirement.
The first mail-in ballots were to be distributed to voters who requested them beginning Sept. 6. But the appeals court rulings, which declared that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name was in the ballot box, were overturned. must be removed force the county election official to reprint ballots. No new date has been announced for the start of mail ballot distribution.