BOISE, Idaho — Youth voting advocacy group Babe Vote is no longer soliciting people on Boise streets with clipboards proposing the service of voter registration, according to a tweet posted Wednesday by the organization.
Babe Vote attributes this abrupt action to the barriers created by House Bill 340 now effective law as of July 1. The organization is filing a lawsuit in response asking a judge to place a pause on the law in question.
"BABE VOTE volunteers attempted to register voters at the Freedom Celebration at Riverfest in Idaho Falls & were unable to register most voters. This is in contrast to registering 101 voters in just a few hours at a smaller festival June 24 in Idaho Falls," Babe Vote tweeted in a thread.
Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane was involved with the creation of HB340, according to the Secretary of State's Communication Director Chelsea Carattini. The legislation intended to make all voting registration options uniform.
"Groups and organizations can still collect completed paper voter registration cards as they have always done and submit them to the county clerks for processing," Carattini said. "Then, when newly registered voters arrive at the polls to vote, they will be asked to provide one of the approved forms of photo ID and a proof of residence with their name and current address."
Voter registration drives, often taking place at parades and festivals, could previously register a voter without proof of residency, according to Carattini. This worked as a potential loophole that HB340 aimed to close; anyone registering to vote at the polls on election day always had to provide proof of residency.
Previously, voter drive cards only required a potential voter to provide their driver’s license number of the last four digits of their social security number, according to Babe Vote volunteer Sam Sandmire. Proof of those documents are now needed to register; a process Babe Vote volunteers - and other citizens managing a voter registration drive - are not authorized to verify.
"It became a waste of Babe vote volunteers time to go out and have people fill out these cards and think they're registered," Sandmire said. "It used to be considered patriotic to go and register voters, making it more difficult, and for us really impossible to help people complete their voter registration is just not democratic."
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