A federal district court on Tuesday refused to expand the kinds of identification voters can use, rejecting the arguments made by a special interest group that aimed to make voting easier for students, veterans and people with out-of-state driver’s licenses.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against Wisconsin’s voter ID law earlier this year, claiming the law was unconstitutional due to its limitations.
The ACLU asked the court Oct. 5 to expand the law to include IDs for veterans, IDs for technical college students and out-of-state driver’s licenses. They argued the law arbitrarily excluded those classes of people.
District Judge Lynn Adelman rejected the ACLU’s arguments in his decision. Adelman explained that a line must be drawn between acceptable and unacceptable forms of ID, otherwise the state would have to create and maintain an infinite list.
Adelman believed the logistics of expanding the list of acceptable forms of ID could hinder the state’s capability of administering the law, but also conceded the state could have added veteran’s IDs to the list.
“To be sure, Wisconsin probably could have included veteran’s ID on the list … without significantly increasing its administrative burden,” Adelman said in his opinion. “However … the state had to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable forms of ID somewhere.”
