Local election boards discourage students from voting

[Ms2001]

According to this article in the Rolling Stone, local election officials are using complex questionnaires and strict requirements to discourage college students from voting where they live, in violation of federal and state laws.

Federal and state courts have clearly established that students have the right to vote where they go to school, even if they live in a dorm. But interviews with college students, civil-rights attorneys, political strategists and legal experts reveal that election officials all over the country are erecting illegal barriers to keep young voters from casting ballots. From New Hampshire to California, officials have designed complex questionnaires that prevent college students from registering, hired high-powered attorneys to keep them off the rolls, shut down polling places on campuses and even threatened to arrest and imprison young voters. Much as local registrars in the South once used poll taxes and literacy tests to deny the vote to black citizens, some county election officials now employ an intimidating mix of legal bullying and added paperwork to prevent civic-minded young people from casting ballots. “Students have been singled out for outright discrimination,” says Neal Rosenstein, government-reform coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group. “If someone was challenging the voting rights of a military person who is stationed somewhere temporarily, we’d be screaming that it’s not patriotic. There shouldn’t be any less of a standard for students, who work and pay sales taxes in those communities.”

In small college towns, students often outnumber all other voters combined – raising fears that they could determine the outcome of local elections. The colonial town of Williamsburg, Virginia, has only 6,000 registered voters – and 7,600 students at the College of William and Mary. In January, when campus leaders began pushing students to register and vote, the city responded by requiring every student to fill out a two-page questionnaire detailing everything from their personal finances to where their car is registered. Of an estimated 150 students who completed questionnaires, only four have been registered.

There’s no way to tell how many college students are being turned away by local election boards – but observers say it could be enough to re-elect George Bush this fall. Voters under the age of twenty-four favored the Democrats by at least twenty percentage points in each of the past three presidential elections, and polls this year indicate that they favor John Kerry by as many as ten points.

1. Why are election officials erecting these barriers to student voting?

I find it hard to believe that there’s a conspiracy to prevent likely Democrat voters from registering. It seems more likely that local officials just don’t want students to influence local policies regarding alcohol, noise ordinances, and other things that affect young people, even when the size of the college population means that young people are a majority.

2. When the number of students approaches or exceeds the number of non-student residents in an area, and permanent residents worry that the students’ votes will outweigh their own, is that grounds to discourage students from voting?

I say absolutely not. Students spend most of their time in that area, even if they live in a dorm. They are subject to local laws. They’re part of the local economy, both as workers and consumers. Even if they only live there 9 months out of the year, they still deserve as much say in their local government as anyone else who lives there.

3. Will these policies affect the outcome of this year’s Presidential election?

I don’t think so… I think Kerry will win by a small margin. But I do think that if more students were able to vote, he’d win by a much bigger margin.

4. What can be done to eliminate these barriers to student voting?

I don’t have much of an answer here - if local officials are unaware of the laws, or intentionally violate them, all that can be done is to replace those officials. But if the residents who are allowed to vote want to discourage students from voting, they’ll probably keep those officials in power.

The article suggests that the actual residency requirements are left up to local officials, instead of being covered by federal law, so that’s something that could be clarified. IMO a clear definition of residency, coupled with stricter enforcement of the laws allowing students to vote where they live, is the best solution.

[asterion]

I vote absentee to my home state and district. I have no interest in trying to vote where I go to school.

[Triskadecamus]

One thing that local registrars might be doing, with all those questions is trying to determine if that student is, in fact, a permanent resident of the precinct in which he is living. Such students must file a permanent change with the board of elections, and can then be considered permanent residents. Residency is not automatically determined by the place you sleep most often.

It has often been the case that participants in mass registration drives are ill advised in the precise definition of residency. A student who is living in a dormitory can be a permanent resident, but is not automatically one. Most dormitory residents in college have permanent residences in different political jurisdictions, often in different states. Many students have permanent addresses at which they are legally entitled to vote. If you moved in at the start of term, it might be that you aren’t eligible to vote by the first Tuesday in November, unless you vote in your prior precinct, by absentee ballot. The documentation necessary to determine all this might seem coercive to the student, but may actually be done to preserve the process of elections. The question of driver’s license might be done because it is policy of law to use your legal residence as the address on your driver’s license. It also determines where you register, and pay taxes on your car.

In the case of a small town, with a very large University within its limits, the actual definition of town residency is subject to determination by the laws of the town. That might well be described deliberately as to prevent the enfranchisement of a huge transient population with no real concern for the best interests of the town itself. State and National elections run by that town must include the University as a legal residence for the State, and the nation, but may make it a separate precinct without the right to vote on town issues.

If you are a permanent resident of the state and county where your university is situated, you do have the right to be a registered voter, in that precinct. You also have the obligation to pay taxes and hold permits under that legal residence. If your University will not permit such a claim, your problem is with them, not the local registrar. Get an apartment.

Tris

[elfkin477]

I’d like to say that it surprises me, but it doesn’t. When I voted in 1996 for the first time, I remember the poll workers making snide comments about how we shouldn’t be able to vote in the town we went to school in…even though we lived there 8 months of the year, and in our home states(my family lived in MA until I was a junior) a mere 4 months. Even though they gave people a hard time- and made some people go back to their dorms for “proof” of recidency like a phone bill- they did ultimately have to let us vote. A bunch of angry nobs getting something like this together in the eight years since? That’s almost believable.

One thing left out of the article makes it more toubling that they mention NH: in this state it isn’t easy to get an absentee ballot. I know that in some states anyone can have one who want it, but here you have to either be disabled or plan to be out of town during the election. Being at school should be a valid under the out of town option, but how would a college student know that if the reason was challenged by some poll person on a power trip? First time voters are new to the voting process, period, never mind a special case like obtaining an absentee ballot… I’m not saying that people would deny them absentee ballots, but they could.