Georgia, Indiana, and Wyoming only accept state university and college ID cards, and Indiana’s public institutions’ IDs must contain expiration dates. While Kentucky technically accepts public and private institutions’ IDs, the state’s voter ID law requires IDs to contain a signature, so it is unclear how many student IDs actually qualify. Wisconsin accepts student ID cards from public and private schools as long as the ID contains a name, photo, signature, issuance date, and expiration date that is not more than two years after the issuance date and is presented with proof of current enrollment such as a tuition fee receipt or an enrolment verification letter. A number of Wisconsin colleges and universities have updated their IDs to contain these elements or will issue a compliant ID upon request, but others have not taken these steps.  
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Wisconsin used to have the most convoluted process for which student IDs could be used as voter ID until the North Carolina Supreme Court, after a change in composition, reversed itself and allowed a strict voter ID law and the country’s most cumbersome student ID as voter ID statute to take effect. The North Carolina voter ID law requires each individual public, private college or university and each individual community college in the state to submit an application for approval of their institutions student ID as voter voter ID attesting to a number of factors around the process used to obtain photos and produce IDs as well as “complies with any other reasonable security measures determined by the State Board to be necessary for the protection and security of the student identification process.”[6]  Additionally, each round of approval is only good for one federal election cycle, an odd number and the following even year, so each individual institution must resubmit their an application for approval each federal election. Additionally, there is a parallel process for state employee IDs to be approved for use as voter ID which public universities and community colleges can submit to for their staff IDs.     
 
The remaining five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, and Mississippi – accept public and private college and university student IDs.[7]
 
Student IDs are given to nearly every college student after providing proof of their identity upon enrollment. They are convenient and secure options that should be acceptable voter ID. Since that is not the case in every state, it is critical for students to understand what forms of identification they can use at the polls so they are not turned away or forced to take extra steps to cast a ballot that counts.