WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The question was raised as a hypothetical as Tippecanoe County Election Board members prepared to abandon rules, nearly a dozen years old, that allowed Purdue students to use the school IDs at Greater Lafayette polling places.

Was it possible – and completely lawful – for a Purdue student running in November for a West Lafayette City Council seat to register to vote in Tippecanoe County, get on the ballot and then be told on Election Day that they didn’t have a proper ID to vote?

The question, posed by Joe Mackey, a former candidate for U.S. Congress, seemed to stump the three-member Election Board on July 25, as they outlined their fresh doubts that Purdue student IDs matched up with the letter of Indiana’s voter ID law.

But the question turned out to be not-so-hypothetical.

“That would be me,” said Shannon Kang, one of four Purdue students on the November ballot for one of nine West Lafayette City Council seats.

Kang – who hails from Atlanta and was there for summer break and missed the Election Board meeting – is registered to vote at her school address in West Lafayette’s District 3, which includes a large swath of Purdue’s campus and near-campus homes to sororities, fraternities and student cooperative housing. That just took the last four digits of her Social Security number. No photo ID required.

She filed to run for city council as a Democrat based on that voter registration. Again, no photo ID necessary.

Election Day will be another matter, when the student ID she’d received as a freshman and used in the past to vote no longer will be valid.

“Looks like I’ll have to pay $10 to get a new Purdue ID if I want to vote,” Kang said. “I’ll get it done. I’m just not sure all of this is really necessary.”

Nick DeBoer, a Democrat running for re-election in West Lafayette City Council’s District 1, which is primarily made up of Purdue students, put it this way: “There are fewer qualifications to run for office than there are to vote. There’s your headline.”

Indiana’s voter ID law, which went into effect in 2008, says a student ID from a state school in Indiana may be used if it meets requirements for other forms of ID acceptable at the polls. That means it must include four things: a photo, a name, an expiration date that shows it is current and be issued by the state of Indiana or the U.S. government. In most cases, a driver’s license, passport, state-issued ID through the BMV or military identification are used.

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In 2008, Tippecanoe County election officials started using a workaround to allow Purdue students – especially those from out of state – to use their campus IDs, even though they missed a key component required in the voter ID law: an expiration date. The solution: Election officials used campus records to confirm that a student looking to vote was enrolled at Purdue. That, they figured, was as good – if not better – than a printed expiration date on an ID card.

The Election Board backtracked on that policy last week, though, after new County Clerk Julie Roush asked whether the local policy was legal. The answer: Board members – Roush, a Republican, Democratic appointee Kent Moore and Republican appointee Randy Vonderheide – said they weren’t willing to risk an entire election on a policy that state election officials privately told them might leave the county exposed. (The Secretary of State’s office had not issued written guidance on the policy as of this week.)

Part of the rationale the Election Board gave: Purdue offered a solution last week when it announced that new student IDs would include an expiration date. Those would go out over the next five years, with the first mass issue going to the freshman class arriving in 2020. Students who want an updated ID sooner than that can buy one for $10, starting in August, Purdue said. (That’s a discounted price from the $25 it typically takes to get a replacement student ID.)

“I think the county’s between a rock and a hard place,” said Jon Jones, a Republican being challenged by Kang for the West Lafayette City Council District 3 seat. “If we continue to do a not-legal process, especially after we know it’s not legal, candidates in a close election could sue the county and create a ginormous mess. Because they could say students voting with non-lawful IDs threw the election and create an even greater issue.”

The other two Purdue students running for West Lafayette City Council are in-state students. Jon Livermore, a Republican running in District 2, is from Carmel. Sydney Rivera, a Republican running in District 1, is from the Indianapolis area.

Livermore and Rivera each said they wanted more time to study the issue before commenting about how it might affect their campaigns. But they Indiana driver’s licenses and won’t face the same step Kang will have to take to get a valid ID to vote.

“Look, say a student has an Ohio driver’s license or a Georgia driver’s license,” Jones said. “If those aren’t accepted to vote anymore, I would presume, why would mine, which has a Fishers address, be accepted to vote? Because both of those are addresses that aren’t my voting addresses, right? The only difference is mine is Indiana. But that doesn’t prove my residency at school in Tippecanoe County.

“If that’s the answer, I think Julie Roush has to follow that,” Jones said. “But I think that’s a terrible answer. You’re saying that in-state students basically can now vote way more easily than out-of-state students. I think, in practical terms, that’s a terrible solution.”

Purdue reported that 34 percent of its 32,672 undergraduates in fall 2019 were out-of-state students – which would total a few more than 11,100. That out-of-state figure would increase once graduate students were included.

A growing enrollment at Purdue doesn’t necessarily translate into student interest in municipal elections.

In 2015, the last West Lafayette municipal election, 192 people voted – 5.4 percent of the 3,559 registered – in a three-way race for the city council seat in the student-dominated District 3.

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In 2011, before Purdue’s campus had been annexed into West Lafayette, 60 people voted in the student-heavy, Village area-centered District 1.

“If you like low-turnout elections, this will be the one to watch,” DeBoer said. “It’s like pulling teeth to get people to the polls. … The ID thing will just make it that much harder.”

Jones said that part of the campaign will include convincing students there’s an election, then persuading students that what happens in the city affects them, then getting them to register to vote.

“‘Oh,’” Jones said, “‘and do you have an ID?’”

Jones said the bigger question will be in 2020, when students turn out in big numbers for a presidential year. He suggested that Purdue speed the rollout of the student IDs. He said the county should press the General Assembly to adjust the voter ID law.

Kang said she’d be back on campus a week before classes start, in part to help at her sorority, Alpha Chi Omega. She could get a free state-issued ID from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, but that means she'd have to give up her driver's license. She said she’d spend $10 on a new Purdue ID, instead. And she’d spend much of the fall semester talking with Purdue students, the majority of them freshmen and sophomores, about the election.

Kang said she’d try to use ID situation to her advantage.

“My plan from the beginning was just to be a student – make sure the students know that I don’t want to be anything above them, I want to be with them,” Kang said.

“Especially with an issue like this, I think this is a great way to involve students who weren’t involved in politics to get involved,” she said. “Anything that gets taken away from them is going to get them asking why. This is could be a great way for them to rise up to the situation.”

► WHAT YOU CAN DO: The general election will be Nov. 5. The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 7. To register through the Indiana Secretary of State, go to indianavoters.in.gov. The site also includes links to check or update voter registration information, who is on your ballot and ways to meet Indiana's voter ID law.

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.

ON THE BALLOT

Here are the candidates running in Lafayette and West Lafayette municipal elections in November 2019. (Note: Incumbents indicated by an asterisk.)

West Lafayette

Mayor: John Dennis*, R; independent Zachary Baiel; no Democrat

Clerk: Sana Booker*, D; no Republican.

City Judge: Lori Stein Sabol*, D; no Republican.

District 1: Nick DeBoer*, D; Sydney Rivera, R.

District 2: Peter Bunder*, D; Jonathan Livermore, R.

District 3: Jon Jones*, R; and Shannon Kang, D.

District 4: Larry Leverenz*, D; no Republican.

District 5: Kathy Parker, D; John Meyers, R.

District 6: Norris Wang*, R; and Austin Bohlin, D.

At-large (three seats): Steve Dietrich*, R; and Democrats Gerald Thomas*, David Sanders* and James Blanco.

Lafayette

Mayor: Tony Roswarski*, D; no Republican.

Clerk: Cindy Murray*, D; no Republican.

District 1: Jerry Reynolds*, R, and Kara Boyles, D.

District 2: Ron Campbell*, D, and Mary Fisher, R.

District 3: Perry Brown*, D; no Republican.

District 4: Lauren Ahlersmeyer*, D, and Oscar Alvarez, R.

District 5: Melissa Weast-Williamson*, D; no Republican.

District 6: Bob Downing*, D, and Perry Barbee, R.

At-large (three seats): Democrats Kevin Klinker*, Lon Heide* Nancy Nargi*; and Todd Wilkins, R.