Please stop trotting out this idiotic idea. Most students don’t have any vested interest in the town because they’re only there to be a customer of a business that happens to be operating out of that town. For the most recent 2 decades of their lives they had a home with their parents and only live away from that home during the time school is in session, because it’s physically impossible to live at home and be a student of the college at the same time.
The question becomes, what does it mean to be a resident of a town? I don’t become a resident of Orlando by spending 2 weeks at Disney, but I was a resident of my current town the day I moved here. The fact that there’s no clear dividing line is a legitimate concern for towns that can be affected by large scale student voting.
He can be OK with whatever he likes, but courts have pretty consistently ruled that students and military personnel must be allowed to register to vote wherever they are domiciled.
Well, it used to be impossible, but nowadays it is perfectly possible. In the not too distant future, students might only be in residence for a year or two, and spend the rest of their education offsite. It would certainly lower costs, which are rapidly becoming unsustainable.
Sorry about that. I’m not sure where it came from. Oh wait…
I guess to me statements like this could easily apply to old people (55 might have been a wee but of hyperbole), but surely 76 year olds are as ‘monolithic’ as college students, and I would estimate they are every bit as likely to “leave behind” their town in 4 years. What is the specific difference between the two groups you are alluding to?
This was already answered several times previously. Currently, the laws allow residency to be established the day before an election- as it should be. I can squint and see that maybe it should be where you are planning on spending (or have spent) the majority of the next/last year, although how anyone determines that is beyond me. Your example is asinine: do you think college kids only spend 2 weeks per year in their college town? If you had met some college students in Orlando on vacation, would they have identified themselves by where they go to school, or where their parents live?
Even if you are given a retardedly long leash and assume every single student packs up and moves back in with mom and pop every summer and again after graduation, why does it weigh so heavily that 3 months at home > 9 months at school when deciding where to vote in the interim?
Students very frequently have another address that they call “home”, which can be argued is their “real” residence. Old people (generally) do not have a “home” that is separate from where they live. Nobody is arguing that students should have no rights to vote anywhere, but that they maybe should be voting based on “home” location rather than their school location.
I’m pretty sure they would identify themselves by the school. Not by the town the school is in, but by the school. “We’re from The Ohio State University” not “We’re from Columbus Ohio”
Because one of those locations is “home” and the other isn’t.
Will you (or the people behind this bill) be making this argument at any point? I still haven’t heard anything besides “students should vote somewhere else”, mainly because it is assumed they will vote liberally. Will these restrictions apply to any other group- snowbirds, military, people with one house in Columbus and one house in Miami? Can we see some examples of the problems this bill is proposing to ‘correct’?
If a person temporarily moves away from their primary residence, as evidenced by actively maintaining that primary residence for the purpose of residing there, voting location should be based on the primary residence, not the temporary residence. If a person moves away permanently, voting location should be based on current residence, regardless of how long they intend to stay there, post election.
But those weren’t proper voter lists - just last name, first name and Date of birth! Seriously, is that all proof you need to vote? Neither SSN nor any other unique identifier?
So another proof that the right-wing paranoia against proper ID works against normal people. Do it right or don’t do it, but half-assed measures don’t do any good.
I’m pretty sure that the American left is just as opposed to national ID cards as anyone else. I sure am. I resent the idea that in the country that I am a citizen and resident of that I would be expected to carry proof of my right to be here. Fuck that.
I think many of the people who oppose national ID cards also oppose those things too. I’m one.
Actually, they’d be lying, because the only people who say the Ohio State University (not to mention capitalizing the “The”) are university P.R. flacks.
Is a university in some alternate universe? It’s just as part of the community as anything else.
Point taken, but would you expect any of them to identify Columbus as where they are from, as opposed to Ohio State? I would be shocked if someone, who moved to Columbus to go to Ohio State, self identifed as a Columbus resident instead of as an Ohio State student.
There’s a reason the word townie exists, and it sure as hell isn’t because students feel a connection with the town the school is in.
The reason the town isn’t “home” has nothing to do with alternate universes, it has to do with the fact that students often have a different residence that they more strongly identify as their home.
This is all sociologically interesting, but irrelevant as far as I’m concerned for the purposes of voting. If you live somewhere, you should get to vote there, regardless of what someone else might think about your locational loyalties. We don’t test an individual voter’s sense of “hereness.” Voting is a fundamental right. Not wanting to have to take into consideration the opinions of people you don’t consider local enough is not a fundamental right. Note that we’ve thrown out very similar strictures such as property ownership. If you live someplace with a significant population that tends not to stay more than a few years, then that’s just where you live.
And as far as the specific question of how someone would answer “where are you from,” I think the answer will vary depending on context. However, people don’t generally name a university when asked by someone where they’re from or where they live.
Have any of you ever been asked by your voting official how long you intend to remain in your jurisdiction? If not, why would students bear this burden and you don’t?
Home is where you hang your toothbrush. When I was a college student living 9+ months of the year in a dorm in a different state than my parents, I was much more concerned with local issues in my college town than in my parents home, and if asked today where I lived in the early 90’s I would say in Portland where I went to college, not New Mexico where I grew up. Remember these students are spending at least 3/4 of the year at college, why should they vote in an community they only spend 1/4 of their time?
Local issues affect students just as much as the affect other locals. If someone wants to put up a Walmart in the place of a popular bike path that many students use to get to class, shouldn’t they have input? . When I was a student, there was a ballot measure that basically would basically have mandated state sponsored homophobia. Voting against this measure was my political awakening, and was more important to me than any measure on the ballot in my parents state ever could be.