A federal judge upheld New Hampshire’s rule that students must show government photo ID to vote, ending college cards at the ballot box while clipping the secretary of state’s registration overreach.
U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Laplante backed the state’s new limit on what students can use to prove who they are when they cast a ballot. College identification cards no longer qualify. A driver’s license, passport, or other government-issued photo ID is now required.
The Center Square reported that the same decision found New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan went too far when he tried to stretch that photo ID rule into the voter registration process on his own.
The split outcome leaves a clear result for Election Day. Students in the Granite State must produce real government ID to vote. Officials do not get a free hand to revise registration rules without the Legislature.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed the measure in April. It wiped out a provision of state election law that had let voters hand over a college identification card and receive a ballot.
Under the new statute, students must show an ID issued by the federal government, an out-of-state driver’s license or ID card, or a U.S. passport before they cast a ballot. Republican proponents long sought the change. They said it cuts the chance of fraud through fake college identification.
That concern fits a wider push for cleaner rolls and tighter checks, including cases where courts have weighed citizenship tools for midterm voter verification, as seen when the high court cleared a citizenship database for election checks.
New Hampshire has more college students per capita than any other state. For years, state law has let students living in the state only temporarily claim residency and vote. Those voters have carried real weight.
Students made up a sizable share of the electorate that helped tip New Hampshire to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020, and Kamala Harris in 2024. Election integrity has been a live fight in the state ever since the 2016 race.
After Ayotte signed the bill, Secretary of State David Scanlan did not stop at the polling place. He unilaterally extended the government-issued photo ID requirement to the state’s voter registration process.
The Coalition for Open Democracy filed a federal lawsuit. The group argued Scanlan lacked authority from the state Legislature and violated separation-of-powers protections in the state Constitution.
Lawyers for the coalition also attacked the ID rule itself. They claimed it
"unconstitutionally burdens the right to vote, discriminates against young voters on account of their age, and unlawfully revise New Hampshire’s election statutes."
Laplante sided with the challengers on the registration piece. He held that Scanlan overstepped. The state, the judge wrote, had not justified expanding the ban that far.
"The State has offered no independent justification for that broader prohibition,"
Laplante stated. He added:
"Under the Supreme Court’s standard for evaluating voting regulations, even a minimal burden on the right to vote must be justified by the State’s interests, and the State has identified no interest."
Good-government groups won on that narrow point. The core voting rule still stands. Students cannot swap a campus card for a government photo ID when they show up to vote.
The Laplante ruling lands against a longer fight over ballot rules in New Hampshire. In 2024, then-Gov. Chris Sununu signed a stricter law. It required identification to cast a ballot with no exceptions, plus documented proof of U.S. citizenship for first-time New Hampshire voters who register.
Voting access groups challenged that statute. A federal judge struck it down as unconstitutional earlier this year. The state appealed. The law remains blocked for now.
Judicial fights over election rules are hardly limited to one state. Courts have tossed voter-backed measures elsewhere, including a Washington Supreme Court decision that voided a voter-backed natural gas measure, and they have also enforced hard lines when fraud is proven in court.
New Hampshire’s own courts have faced accountability questions of a different kind, from ethics scandals to high-profile resignations such as when the state’s chief justice resigned after a rigged payout admission. Laplante’s order, by contrast, tracks the text of a law the Legislature and governor already put in place.
Ayotte and Republican backers framed the student ID change in plain terms. Fake college cards are easier to gin up than a driver’s license or passport. Requiring government-issued photo ID lowers that risk at the point of voting.
National security agencies have separately flagged large numbers of noncitizens on voter rolls, and DHS has identified hundreds of thousands of noncitizens listed on voter rolls as officials prep tighter election-security work. Proven fraud cases still end in real sentences, including when a Colombian illegal immigrant drew three years for voter fraud and identity theft.
New Hampshire’s student rule does not ban students from voting. It asks them to prove identity the same way adults do for boarding a plane, cashing a check, or buying a beer. The judge left that requirement intact.
What he rejected was an executive add-on. Scanlan tried to impose the same photo ID bar on registration without new legislation. Laplante said the state never justified that extra step under the Supreme Court’s voting-regulation standard.
The practical line is simple. The Legislature and governor set the ballot-box ID rule. The secretary of state does not get to expand it by memo. Students who want a ballot need a government photo ID, not a dorm card.
Secure elections start with knowing who is voting. New Hampshire just kept that basic check in force where it counts most, at the polls.