Students Fight for Their Right to Vote

Last week was both a boon and a bust to student voting rights, as Congress held a hearing on safeguarding students' right to vote, and troublesome allegations surfaced about swing state voter intimidation.

The Supreme Court in 1979 guaranteed students the right to register and vote in the district in which they attend school. Many students who attend out-of-state schools don't do this-- they use absentee ballots to vote in their home state. But for many others, their college town, district, or state quickly becomes their home. They spend the majority of the year there; many students volunteer or work in their school communities; they pay taxes there (sales tax, and income tax if they work while studying). But the process of switching states can be confusing for students-- some states have more stringent residency requirements than others, such as not accepting college addresses as proof-of-residence.

On Thursday, Congress held a hearing entitled "Ensuring the Right of College Students to Vote," with testimony from groups like the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE), who spoke of barriers to voting such as inadequate polling places and long lines. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), also testified in favor of the bill she introduced in July that would require all federally-funded colleges to provide voter registration materials to students when they register for classes. The president of Oberlin College said that Ohio permits colleges to issue utility bills to students as proof-of-residence. All of these would be great steps to giving students fair and easy access to the vote.

But there's a difference between confusing requirements and politically-motivated disenfranchisement. Some believe that students are temporary residents and therefore shouldn't vote locally at all. The issue came to the forefront before the Iowa Democratic caucuses this year when a spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton's campaign upbraided Barack Obama's campaign for "busing in" out-of-state students to vote for him. (The Clinton camp later backed off of the statement).

More often, the argument over student voting rights falls along partisan lines-- particularly when the campus in question sits in a particularly conservative area, or an all-important swing state. Students at the Historically Black Prairie View A&M have been engaged in a battle with county officials for two years over allegations that students were purged from voter lists. In February students marched miles to their polling place because the county refused to open one on or near campus.

Just this month, students at Virginia Tech received a press release from the county telling them (falsely) that they could lose scholarships if they registered to vote locally. This week, Colorado College students got fliers from the local Republican county clerk informing out-of-state students that if they were listed as dependents on their parents' tax forms, they were not eligible to vote at school. The Student PIRG's New Voters' Project also called registrars' offices in several counties in South Carolina, posing as local students. They were told that they could not vote.

The decision of whether or not to vote at home or at school is one that every student should consider seriously and determine where they feel most politically connected, but should they decide to vote at school, they have the right. (The websites Vote Back Home and Count More offer state-by-state comparisons of student populations and reasons to vote in one state or another; on the flip side, Student Voting Rights allows people to report voting problems). The congressional hearing and bills like Rep. Schakowsky's are a start, but it will take an on the ground effort to make sure that the election is clean and fair for all students.

Comments (11)

1. This is a fantastic posting (one small correction - the group that surveyed registrars was the Student PIRGs' New Voters Project, www.newvotersproject.org; not Young Voter PIRG).

   I am consistently amazed at how college towns harm their own interest by trying to block student voting. The town where I went to college was an economic disaster, our college was by far the biggest economic generator for them, but residents were still wary of the student body. So instead of the local government paying attention to student body and making investments that would have attracted students to stay and attract new businesses, the town stayed in its rut as almost all the students left after graduation. The skill sets and educational levels of our graduates could have revitalized their economy but instead we went to New York, Boston, and other cities that have the infrastructure and opportunities young adults are interested in because their communities already value educated youth.

   It always amazes me how folks, from either crude generalizations and fears of youth, or for party advantage, are willing to sacrifice the first and most important right bestowed by our Constitution (the right to vote in the community you live in). College students are highly educated in vital fields and often more politically aware and active than older adults, since they have more free time and are academically focused. Many of our most important social movements were fueled by student activism. We have given any 18 year old the right to vote and it was the right decision. Communities that seek to overturn that decision merely isolate themselves from that educated talent, and thus from the stream of economic growth as well.

   Posted by JelloforMayor at 09/29/2008 @ 9:20pm

2. Wow...LVL screaming about the "threat" of young people actually voting! I haven't read anything that paranoid in a long time. You would think any student who goes to college instantly becomes a rabid Marxist by the time they set foot on campus. Please, LVL. Students become a rich and vibrant part of the communities they inhabit for four or five (or even more) years that they are present in their locales. Are you honestly saying that just because they might go home for three months (and a lot choose to stay and work and attend classes year-round) and form an important dynamic of their communities, but just because they grew up somewhere else, they should have zero say in those communities? Heck, why not a five year moratorium after you move before you can vote in your new town? That would at least be marginally consistent.

   Posted by yutsano at 09/29/2008 @ 11:27pm

3. lvliberty-Yes reese,it's another leftist plot.Everything is.

   Posted by i'm nobody at 09/29/2008 @ 11:32pm

4. lvliberty-It should be up to the individual to decide where their community is and not you.

   Posted by i'm nobody at 09/29/2008 @ 11:43pm

5. LVL deciding who makes up a community and who doesn't, why shouldn't I be shocked at this?

   Oh and as to your military argument: every time my father had a new duty station in the Navy one of the first matters he attended to was registering to vote in his new municipality. So your "treat them like the military" argument doesn't wash. True, we may have only stayed for a couple of years, but that was certainly enough time to conrtibute to the local economy and character before Uncle Sam had us move on. And college students stay for a lot longer than we did at any one station. Care to try another argument there LVL?

   Posted by yutsano at 09/29/2008 @ 11:52pm

6. Most states have relatively short residence requirements for voting eligibility anyway. Several years in a community as a student should suffice. And repugs with their superior gerrymandering skills should welcome a "fair & balanced" approach to voting.

   Posted by Sorelish at 09/29/2008 @ 11:54pm

7. Posted by lvliberty1 at 09/29/2008 @ 11:00pm

   FYI Military personnel can be "residents" of any state they choose. Lots of our friends chose states with no income tax and claimed tham as their legal residence without having ever been there. Was it legal? I don't know, but it sure was common.

   Not among us Cheeseheads. We we pay taxes as long as it keeps Lambeau Field and Wisconsin Public Radio open for business. :)

   Posted by Pogge at 09/30/2008 @ 12:19am

8. I give Green Bay credit: they could have sold out the Packers a long time ago but they still are owned by the city. Talk about one unifying community force there (and BTW they shafted Favre six ways from Sunday, and his play for the Jets proves it. Didn't Zirin write something about that?)

   Posted by yutsano at 09/30/2008 @ 12:27am

9. Even great quarterbacks come and go, but the "Beer Barrel Polka" remains the same.

   Posted by Pogge at 09/30/2008 @ 12:46am

10. People should vote where they go home to sleep at night. State laws are designed to collect the most out-of-state tuition, not to recognize where the student actually lives all or most of the time. We routinely recognize residency of non-students the minute they walk into town, even though new residents have no more "connection to the community" than the man in the moon.

    Posted by sdchandler at 10/01/2008 @ 11:34am

11. Don't worry don't worry!!

    From what I've heard... the Obama supporters are registering students in two different locales.. (school's town and hometown) so that they can vote TWICE...

    Obama will win, just calm down.

    (As bad as Bush is, why are the dems resorting to this?)

    Posted by bleedingheart at 10/01/2008 @ 11:45am