Major efforts afoot to help students navigate voter ID law

From madison.com: “Major efforts afoot to help students navigate voter ID law” — The state’s spring primary is nearly three months away, with more high-profile votes — including a possible recall attempt of Gov. Scott Walker and the 2012 presidential election — even further down the road.

Yet major efforts already are underway to make sure college students who want to vote will be able to do so under the state’s new voter ID law. State elections chief Kevin Kennedy says the law is the biggest administrative change for voting since 18-year-olds were granted the right to vote in 1971.

Some fear that it could keep students away from the polls.

“While the law is not a positive in terms of helping students vote, I think it has spurred a sense of motivation and determination that will hopefully allow us to spread the word to students across Madison about what they’ll need to do to be able to register and then vote next year,” says Sam Polstein, a UW-Madison junior who helped form the Madison Student Vote Coalition, a non-partisan organization dedicated to registering and motivating area students to vote.

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