New Hampshire urges Supreme Court to reinstate student ID voting ban ahead of election

New Hampshire officials are urging the Supreme Court to lift a last-minute block on a state law barring student identification cards from being used as valid forms of ID to vote, weeks ahead of the hotly contested midterm elections.Officials from the Granite State filed an emergency petition seeking to halt what it calls a “late-breaking rewrite of New Hampshire’s election procedures” by a federal district court. New Hampshire enacted a law in April barring student IDs from being used for voter ID, a law that was in effect for the state’s primary elections in September but was blocked by a federal district court judge earlier this month ahead of the general election.New Hampshire Solicitor General Anthony Galdieri argued that the federal district court violated the Purcell principle, which generally prohibits courts from making changes to election procedures on the eve of an election, noting that state elections officials have been trained to handle the voter ID standards. “The district court’s order requires the Secretary to reverse all these efforts in the immediate lead up to the general election. It does so based on its own interpretation of state law, while generating more questions than it answers,” Galdieri said in his petition urging the Supreme Court to allow enforcement of its ban on student IDs as valid voter ID.New Hampshire does not offer in-person early voting, but it does allow mail-in voting, as well as in-person voting on Election Day. Galdieri did not issue a deadline for the high court to make a decision on the emergency petition, but the Supreme Court set a quick briefing schedule that concluded with the state’s reply brief filed Tuesday morning. The justices could issue a ruling on the emergency petition as soon as Tuesday.Coalition for Open Democracy, the group that sued over the student ID law, urged the Supreme Court to reject the state’s effort to restore the law, arguing in its brief that the lower court’s ruling should be upheld and noting that in-person voting has not begun in the state.WHY SPECULATION ABOUT JUSTICE ALITO’S FUTURE CONTINUES DESPITE HIS REJECTION OF RETIREMENTThe Granite State has competitive gubernatorial and Senate races, along with elections for Congress and the state legislature, set for the November election.The emergency petition by New Hampshire officials is the latest election-related lawsuit to make its way to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket in recent months, after recent rulings on Missouri’s congressional map, ad rates for campaign and political parties, and the Trump administration’s mail ballot order.