Republicans Target Black College Students with Voter Suppression Laws

As Black people across the nation face the challenge of keeping access to the franchise of voting while Republican legislators and governors try to suppress the Black vote to derail President Barack Obama's reelection efforts, Black college students find themselves a primary target of those strategizing to keep people of color away from the polls.

New voting laws that went into effect in several states could impact the turnout of young college voters in several states, including Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Texas. Many of these states have a number of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, with tens of thousands of student coming from the New York City area as well as other states with large Black populations.

Laws that now require college students to show government-issued ID work to exclude them from the voting process because lawmakers know they are unlikely to have such identification. Student IDs will not be accepted at the polls in several states, even if the IDs are from state institutions.

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