Jenna Roberg is from Minnesota, but the UW-Madison graduate student in social work has come to care a lot about her adopted community, she says. And that means she wants to vote here. As Roberg sees it, voting where she is living and attending school is part and parcel with the university’s vaunted Wisconsin Idea — taking the knowledge of the university beyond campus and into the community. That’s why Roberg, a member of the Student Vote Coalition, is among UW-Madison students who will speak Thursday in support of a Dane County Board resolution calling on UW-Madison to alter student identification cards to put them in compliance with state Voter ID laws. “It’s the right thing to do to make voting as easy and accessible as possible,” Roberg said. “The administration should do everything in its power to support students to have access to voting.”
With the all but assured approval of the resolution sponsored by 28 of its 37 members, the county board will join the Madison City Council in calling on the university to change its student ID cards so that they can be used to vote.
UW-Green Bay and UW-Superior, as well as Madison College and Edgewood College, have opted to alter their IDs to conform with the 2011 voting law.
But UW-Madison officials have resisted changing their policy and at a meeting early last month with a group of students, Dean of Students Lori Berquam did not seem open to reconsidering it, Roberg said.
Full Article: Dane County Board, Madison City Council call on UW to make student ID cards voter friendly | Higher education | host.madison.com.