RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina Board of Elections on Tuesday approved the first digital ID that can meet the state’s voter ID requirement, signing off on mobile credentials offered to students and employees at the state’s main public university.
The Democratic-controlled State Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines to sign the credentials, saying registered voters could meet the state’s relatively new requirement to show photo identification by showing the Mobile UNC One Card created by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The voter ID law establishes several categories of qualifying IDs, such as North Carolina driver’s licenses, U.S. passports and some free identification cards. The state board is also accepting applications from public and private universities, local governments and others seeking to qualify their IDs. While the board has approved more than 130 traditional student and employee IDs as eligible to vote in 2024, Tuesday’s vote marks the qualification of the first such ID posted from a person’s smartphone.
The state Republican Party later criticized the approval and suggested legal action may be imminent. Minor changes to voting access could affect the outcomes of several expected close statewide elections in North Carolina this fall.
State law does not specifically define an “ID.” An attorney for the committee told committee members that she believes there is nothing in the law that specifically limits authorization to printed IDs.
UNC-Chapel Hill students and staff who use Apple phones can get a mobile One Card or continue to use a physical One Card that has already been approved as a qualifying card. One Cards can also be used for building and parking access and to pay for groceries.
Democratic Chairman Alan Hirsch said technological trends led him to support a mobile ID, noting that airline passengers now show their boarding passes on their smartphones.
“The law certainly provides enough leeway to approve a digital card as a card. I think that’s the way the world is,” Hirsch told his colleagues during the online meeting. “I think everyone from a certain, younger generation than us lives by it.”
Republican members argued that the language of the voter ID law requires a real card unless the General Assembly changes it. Approving a mobile ID while state committee officials still say showing a photo of a hard ID from a mobile device cannot be accepted when voting in person is “confusing and inconsistent,” said Republican board member Four Eggers.
“It’s a different process that we’re going through here than if I just give my friend my football tickets when I download them from the website,” Eggers said.
The law states that qualified IDs must meet several photo and security requirements to be approved by the board. State board executive director Karen Brinson Bell said other schools have tried unsuccessfully to get similar mobile IDs approved. UNC-Chapel Hill meets all the standards, she said, especially that the ID has an expiration date.
In a post on X, the state Republican Party wrote that the election board was “playing further games with election integrity” by allowing a digital ID.
“Rest assured – we will not tolerate this,” the state Republican Party wrote.
The current voter ID law was originally passed in late 2018 but was not implemented until the 2023 local elections as legal wrangling continued. A trial in a federal lawsuit challenging the photo ID law concluded in May, but a judge has not yet made a decision.
Anyone who cannot present valid identification will cast a provisional vote and must either complete an exemption form or present identification before the vote count is complete.
People casting traditional absentee ballots will also be asked to put a copy of an ID in their envelope. UNC-Chapel Hill voters can now insert a photocopy of the One Card displayed on their phones after Tuesday’s approval, board spokesman Pat Gannon said.
On Tuesday, the panel also officially placed Cornel West on the state’s presidential ballot after a federal judge overturned the panel’s recent decision not to recognize a political group that had apparently collected enough signatures to be recognized as the state’s official party.
The board voted along party lines last month against recognizing North Carolina’s Justice for All Party, with some board members questioning the signature-gathering methods.
But U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle wrote on August 12 that the board had gone too far in rejecting the party’s application outright. On Tuesday, the board voted unanimously to follow Boyle’s order to declare Justice for All the official party and to approve West, a progressive activist and professor, as a candidate on the ballot.
