One Student, No Vote

[marmar]

from The American Prospect:



One Student, No Vote

The dust-up in Iowa over college students caucusing is only the most recent example of challenges to student voters. But activist across the country are organizing to ensure students get a fair shake at the polls.

Adam Doster | December 6, 2007 | web only




When the Clinton camp voiced displeasure with Senator Barack Obama for encouraging Iowa-registered, out-of-state college students to participate in the January 3 caucuses, her campaign was taking a student voter disenfranchisement page right out of the Republican playbook.

Take this case in Maine. In January, a Republican state representative introduced LD 203, a bill that would have made Maine students ineligible to vote in their college town if they lived in university-owned housing while attending school. Proponents argued that college students, who may leave after graduation never to return, shouldn't be offered the chance to shape local policies. They also cited allegations of students casting absentee ballots in other states while simultaneously voting in Maine elections.

However, according to the secretary of state and the registrar of voters in Orono, home of Maine's flagship public university, no such voter fraud has ever been recorded. Even the bill's author confessed that he had no evidence to substantiate the accusations.

LD 203 was not the first assault on student voting rights in Maine. During the 2000 campaign, the town registrar of Brunswick, home of Bowdoin College, turned students away from the polls through deceptive residency questions. In 2002, during a close congressional contest, Henry Beck, a junior at Colby Collegeand the youngest serving member of the Waterville, Maine city council, says Republican operatives flooded campuses with flyers threatening that students would lose financial aid or healthcare if they voted at school.

But this year, Maine students fought back. Activists filled hearing rooms, condemned the bill in newspaper and radio outlets, and organized online, arguing they live, work, volunteer, and pay sales taxes in their college towns. Their efforts eventually paid off; every major area newspaper denounced LD 203 and it was voted down in the State Senate in June.

Despite the success in Maine, student voter disenfranchisement is still prevalent across the country. As Renee Paradis, counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law notes, "it's been a perennial issue ever since the voting age changed." But with the 2008 election quickly approaching, students and allies are finding innovative and sustainable ways to ensure that students can register and vote in the district they prefer, and activists hope it is one cure for low voting rates among young people. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=one_student_no_vote

[Captain Hilts]

1. Vote absentee. I did. In VA, via Canada. They DO need to make it easier to vote absentee. nt