Willow Cornelius has been canvassing on campus with the New Voters Project since January and says an order issued by a state District Court judge Friday will undermine the vote.
"I think it's targeting (young voters) - bottom line," she said.
The New Voters Project is working to increase the youth vote, Cornelius said.
Judge Robert Thomson's order would require all voters who do not register at the county clerk's office to show ID at the polls. This includes the thousands of new voters registered by non-profit groups such as the New Voters Project. The judge stayed the order until Friday to consider how it would be implemented.
According to the state Bureau of Elections, 78,000 new voters have registered in New Mexico since the beginning of the year.
The order would also require identification with a current address. For people who live in the dorms or who move around a lot, this might prove to be a problem at the polls, Cornelius said.
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"The voting effort is so low here that if somebody goes up to the polls and are turned away, they're not going to go back," she said.
Cornelius said it is a partisan issue.
"Tons of young people are registering to vote, and typically they seem to lean to the left," she said. "It's an election year, and these Republicans are nervous."
Cornelius signed onto a lawsuit to try to appeal the judge's order.
State Sen. Dianna Duran said she doesn't understand why so many people are against the idea of requiring voters to present IDs at the polls. She said she intends to introduce a piece of legislation on the opening day of the 2005 session requiring all voters to present ID at the polls.
"It is not to disenfranchise any voter - which is why Congress instituted so many forms of identification - but to say we want you to know your vote is important, and you are the only one who will be able to vote in your name," Duran said.
The law now asks first-time voters to show either a valid photo ID, utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or other government document with the name and address of the applicant.
Duran, who has assisted other Republican legislators in efforts to pass voter ID requirements for years, said fraud has come up in New Mexico. She cited a case this month where a father found in his mailbox a registration card mailed to his 13-year-old son.
"There are those people who would use someone's name, give a fake year of birth and have a voter ID card sent," she said. "But they don't even care about getting the card, because they don't require the card at the polls either."
Cornelius said she's always had a problem with New Mexico not requiring IDs at the polls. But she said now is not the time to fix it.
"You can't do it two months before an election," she said. "It is something you have to deal with way in advance, before I start giving people information that will be wrong."
Cornelius has registered over 1,000 people to vote since January and told all of them they will not have to take an ID to the poll.
"In order to make it a law, the need to have dealt with that (was) years ago," she said. "I think they need to stick with what they say and not go back and forth in accordance with what works for them."
