No one is suggesting this - what are you talking about?
They’re not suggesting we change the age limit… though that would automatically disenfranchise over half of the college age population that represents the “problem”.
Our reluctance to register an “official” address contributes to the problem. Students living in a dormitory 9 months of the year, are they residents of the town the dorm is in, or are they residents of the place they go to when the dorms shut for the summer? How about if you rent off-campus?
I think it’s fuzzy. As a person who actually cares about local government issues, I would be very concerned if there was a large, monolithic block of voters affecting the management of the town they’re going to leave behind in 2 years.
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newletter. I assume you would also favor disenfranchisement of old people? Cause, I mean, it’s not like they are going to be invested in long term solutions to problems- they’re just gonna die pretty soon anyways. Lets just make it easy and say no one over 55 gets to cast a ballot either.
Or anybody who does anything past a certain threshold of riskiness for a hobby. Climbers, sky-divers, extreme anythingers…all of them lose the vote as well.
Hold on here. He’s not being as evil as you think he is. Evil, yes. But not THAT evil 
I have seen this where I went to college and it has impact on the local area. I went to a town that had 60,000 residents and about 16,000 were college students. The problem is that the vast majority of these students don’t ‘really’ live in the area and many of their parents don’t even live in the state. So why should these students have such a large impact on local politics especially since they and their parents contribute so little in tax dollars?
He just wants them to vote where they ‘really’ live…which is their parents community.
And what about childless people? They have no stake in the future! Votes for parents only, and gay adoption don’t count!
By the way, this should be thought of as good news. When the opposition feels it is necessary to take action against you then that means they have some fear of you. It should be thought of as success and used to stoke the movement/morale.
{yes, I have been accused in the past of being a ‘glass is half full’ guy }
Time to trot out the Heinlein examples. Browse through *Tunnel in the Sky, Starship Troopers, * and Expanded Universe for Heinlein’s (frequently clearly intended as whacko) alternate franchises
Mothers who have given birth
People who can pay gold
People who can solve Quadratic Equations
People who have volunteered for National Service and completed it
Convince me that students show up to vote for local elections. Unless there’s a referendum that really touches the student bodies, only a very small percentage of them probably vote in anything but Presidential/Congressional elections. So if you want to keep students from voting on town affairs, just have your local elections out of sync with the November elections.
This would eliminate a great deal of active-duty military people as well.
Why is that where they “really” live, necessarily? When I went away to college, my college town became very much where I lived. I stayed there working and taking classes in the summertime and I only went home to stay when the dorms were closed. I lived there for eight years as a student, and after I got my own apartment (two years in) I never spent more than one consecutive night in my hometown, and probably less than a week’s worth over the course of a year. I was very involved with the local community, and I still consider that city as much “home” as the town where I grew up or the one where I live now.
I would have been pissed to be told that I couldn’t vote because I didn’t really live there.
Do old people have another residence that can be arguably considered their primary residence, where they will move to once they die? A graveyard doesn’t count, unless it’s in Chicago.
The point is that you get to vote once per election. That one vote is to be placed based on your actual, honest-and-true primary residence. Not necessarily the place where you happen to be hanging your hat on election day.
Remember, I did say it was evil…just not THAT evil
By this, I mean, that he does have a point. You may not agree with it and he may be wrong…but he does have an argument for his position. I would be upset as well if my taxes kept get raised because of a large block of voters who don’t pay taxes and don’t really live in the community vote to do so.
Whether you rent off- or on-campus, once you are a renter, you register. You decide where your primary residence is - usually the one where your “center of living” is at. In other words, where do you spend most of your time, where are most of your friends, which town are you most interested in?
Some students here rent a flat, but every Friday they commute home to their village and parents, because they feel more at home there than in a real big city. Others move here permanently.
Wherever you decide your primary residence is, you get to vote. You can register a secondary residence if you live there part-time and commute, but you can’t vote there.
Do we ask any other group of voters whether they intend to remain in the community? Why should we ask this if students? If you’re in school, you’re generally there 8 months of the year. You’re more affected by local policy than you are in your parents’ hometown. So you should vote at your college address, in my opinion. I can’t see how any law to prevent this would pass constitutional challenges.
I still feel guilty for voting in the Alameda County Dog-Catcher and then moving to Maine two months later.
That’s not a bad idea – even if the primary residence for college students might be where they spend 9 months of each year. The problem is that it requires some kind of coordination of voter registration at the federal level, so that (e.g.) a person who has a winter house in Florida and a summer house in Ohio can be prevented from registering and voting in both states. To stop that, you need to be able to compare the Ohio voter lists and the Florida voter lists.
I think we all know why that is a very bad idea.
What cases addressing voter residency have you looked at to reach this opinion?
I’m going to start researching this today, so if you’ve done some of the legwork already, it would save me some time. I’m starting with Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330 (1972). Any others? Thanks!
YOU’RE the one responsible for the great Doberman Cluster-fuck!