In order to vote in the next Wisconsin election, all college students will need is the right sticker.
The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board unanimously approved a policy Monday permitting state universities and colleges to issue stickers for student identification cards that would validate them for identification at the polls.
This comes as relief to universities, who would otherwise have had to pay, or have students pay, to make IDs compliant with a new law, passed in the legislature last spring.
The law requires IDs to include an expiration date and signature, standards that no university in the state currently meets.
The stickers, which will display dates of issue and expiration along with students' signatures, enable the use of existing ID cards for voting purposes.
""This should help,"" said UW System spokesperson, Dave Giroux. ""With $250 million worth of budget cuts to make, we're looking for cost-effective ways to comply with the new law.""
Proponents of the law say it will decrease voter fraud in Wisconsin by requiring further verification of voters identities. However, the law faced intense public scrutiny when it passed last spring.
Critics alleged the legislation disenfranchised student voters by disqualifying current student ID cards as valid forms of identification.
One critic of the bill, former UW-Madison student and current District 5 Rep. Analiese Eicher, said she thinks the new legislation is ""more reasonable"" than the original voter ID requirements, which she calls ""excessive from the beginning.""
Eicher said the implementation of stickers is an improvement, but still presents a ""hassle"" to students who must seek them out the stickers to make their IDs compliant.
""It'll be a lot education,"" said Eicher, ""but for the time being, it's not an awful solution.""
More optimistically, Giroux said, ""Anything that helps more UW students participate fully in our democracy is a good thing.""
Under the law, proof of enrollment is required along with validated student IDs at the polls in order for the identification to be acceptable.
The photo ID law takes effect Jan. 1, meaning students must have stickered student identification or another valid form of ID to vote in time for the Feb. 21 spring primary.
