Campus Crackdown: Fox News Attacks Student Voter Registration Effort

[Q]

Monday, September 27th, 2004
Campus Crackdown: Fox News Attacks Student Voter Registration Effort

The 2004 election is expected to see a record number of people registering to vote. But when some feminist groups at the University of Arizona kicked off a campus voter registration campaign, Fox News charged that they were aiding out-of-state students in committing felony voter fraud.

As the November election draws nearer, get out the vote campaigns are intensifying across the country. Many analysts predict that an unprecedented number of people will register to vote. But here in Arizona, a group of students at the university charge that they are being harassed for encouraging students to register. Late last month, students in the Women's Studies honorary society, in conjunction with the Feminist Majority Foundation, gathered on the lawn of the University of Arizona registering voters. They called the drive "Suffrage 2004." They were engaging in an activity that is common on many campuses nationwide. In recent weeks on the Arizona campus, the college Democrats, Republicans and student government had run similar drives. But this one was different. As the students gathered on the lawn doing voter registration, the local Fox News affiliate pulled up to the site and with cameras rolling accused the students of engaging in felony voter fraud.

The Fox reporters charged that Arizona law prohibits students from out of state from registering to vote in Arizona. For their part, the students say they had consulted with the local registrar on voter law before they picked up the registration forms and insisted that state law requires only that someone live in the state for 29 days before the election.

• Kelly Kraus is president of the University of Arizona Network of Feminist Student Activists. The network is an affiliate of the Feminist Majority Foundation. She has led efforts at the University of Arizona to register students to vote.

• Sarah Ransom is with the National Lawyers Guild Student Chapter at the University of Arizona.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/27/1433241

[whistle]

1. Is there any stats yet on how many more voters are registered...

...for the 2004 elections than either 2000 or 2002?

[zbdent]

2. So, isn't this an admission that educated young people

are tending more to vote for Dems?

When Faux and freundes try to stem the voting by the young and the educated, it must mean that they're nervous . . .

[Cocoa]

3. this is a major front of the election wars

a while ago, republicans in Florida made a stink about ACT hiring former felons to register people.

And now it seems that the success of the dem efforts have them spooked, just yesterday Andy Rooney chose to use his commentary on 60 minutes to ridicule GOTV efforts, and a DUer reports that Jeff Greenfield did the same on CNN, and now this thing in Arizona.

[John Q. Citizen]

6. Yep, it's the Republican suppress the vote effort.

[madrchsod]

4. isn`t that

intimidation? disrupting voter registration?

[geek tragedy]

5. Sue the bastards.

That there is per se defamation.

[gratuitous]

7. I breathlessly await the Fox exposé

On the Republicans running their ticket for two men who are residents of the same state, in violation of the Constitution. Cheney has less of a residence connection to Wyoming than out-of-state students who live at their university.