Judge Joseph Laplante declined on Tuesday 1 September to block HB 323, the New Hampshire law that removes student identification cards from the list of documents a voter may present at the polls. The ruling came a week before the state's primary on Tuesday 8 September.1 New Hampshire has roughly a dozen colleges and universities whose out-of-state students register locally, and a student card was until this law one of the simplest ways for them to prove identity.
Laplante rested the decision on election timing rather than on the merits of the law. He wrote that the 3 November general election may stand differently, because voting there had not yet begun.2 That leaves the challenge alive and the restriction in force for one election, which is a common shape for a ruling issued in the week before a poll. The same question is being contested federally: a federal court made its block on the president's elections order lasting in June, and New Hampshire narrows it from the other direction.
