Republicans sued the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) over the recent decision to allow digital identification cards to be used by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) employees and students for voting.
The state’s Republican Party and the Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court on Thursday, just a few weeks after North Carolina’s board of elections approved the use of UNC-issued digital IDs with a 3-2 vote. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit said the school-issued digital IDs do not comply with state voter ID law.
“The law does not allow the NCSBE to expand the circumstances of what is an acceptable student identification card, beyond a tangible, physical item, to something only found on a computer system,” the GOP committees argued in the lawsuit.
UNC digital IDs are available on Apple devices. The cards, which are voluntary, can present from phones digitally. Republicans said in the lawsuit that identification, which would make a voter eligible to cast a vote, should be in “physical, tangible” form.