At a time when young Americans are registering to vote in record numbers, a variety of fresh obstacles threaten their participation. This could create massive Election Day headaches for youth and adult voters alike.

"We're looking at a fairly serious train wreck," says Gary Kalman, who heads the federal legislative office for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).

The problem: A slew of restrictive new election laws take direct aim at the very voters -- the "Millennial" crowd aged 30 and under -- who have helped swell the rolls and crowd primaries in recent months. These include state laws that impose tough new restrictions on voter registration, disqualify voters because of minor database errors and require a photo ID, such as a driver's license, at the polls.

Of these, the photo ID movement threatens young voters most directly. In its landmark Crawford v. Marion County Election Board [PDF] ruling on April 28, the Supreme Court upheld by 6-3 Indiana's photo ID requirement for voters -- the strictest in the nation. Other states, including Florida and Georgia, also require voters to present a photo ID at the polls, and the ruling clears the way for similar laws pending in legislatures around the country.

The ruling was heralded by conservatives, who argue that it will restore public confidence and combat voter fraud. But civil rights activists counter that it will disenfranchise large blocs of voters who do not have photo identification, including elderly, minority, low-income and student voters.

Students tend to either lack a driver's license or have one only in the state where they resided before attending school, say political organizers who target young voters. Federal Highway Administration data show that more than 20 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds do not have a valid driver's license.

Yet voter turnout and registration among students and other young people, which has been escalating steadily over the past two election cycles, has spiked dramatically in 2008. Americans younger than 30 make up a substantial segment of the hundreds of thousands of new voters flocking to primaries around the country, election officials report.

A recent survey by Harvard University's Institute of Politics found that "in the last few months of the primary season, the youth vote (18-29) quadrupled in Tennessee, and approximately tripled in primary and caucus contests in Iowa, Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas." Young voters are fired up by the candidacy of Barack Obama, who leads in polls for this age group, and by driving issues such as the economy and the Iraq war.

Election watchdog groups warn that poll workers may not be ready for this tidal wave of new voters, particularly the student population. Students not only lack driver's licenses, they often change addresses frequently and live in less affluent neighborhoods, where polling places can be scarce and understaffed. This puts young voters at greater risk of showing up at the wrong polling place, or discovering long lines or delays if poll workers aren't prepared for them.

"We're quite concerned that election officials aren't fully on top of ensuring that there are enough [workers] at polling places that might be hit by this turnout tsunami that people are talking about," says Michael Slater, deputy director of Project Vote, a nonprofit that encourages voter participation.

Some young voters might have trouble getting on the rolls to begin with, thanks to new state registration restrictions. These include requiring those who register new voters to undergo state-run training, limiting the number of registration forms available to organizers and stiff new fines for clerical errors. A Florida law that imposes fines of up to $1,000 for lost or late registration forms faces a legal challenge from the League of Women Voters.

"That has put a dampening effect on all of the organized efforts" to register voters in Florida, said League president Mary G. Wilson. Another problem in Florida, Wilson notes, is the state's "no match, no vote" law, which knocks new voters off the rolls if their names or Social Security numbers can't be perfectly matched with government databases. Such databases are rife with errors, studies show.

"The first set of worries is that people are going to find it very hard to get on the rolls," said Slater, of Project Vote. "And second is that, when they go to cast their ballots, they are going to find a lot of confusion and disorganization at polling places that are not prepared to handle them."

By some estimates, the younger-than-30 generation now numbers 50 million, a quarter of the voting-age population. Their recent rush to register and turn out is a positive signal that Americans haven't given up on their problem-plagued voting system just yet. There's a risk that these young voters' first attempt to cast ballots could turn into a nightmare -- both for them and for those standing in line behind them.

"From the registration to the polling places to the actual ID, students face enormous hurdles," said Kalman, of U.S. PIRG. "And it's something we're going to have to get over if we want the next generation to be active in politics."