|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Civil & Human Rights : Education : Elections & Legislation |
|
Students Organize to Resist Suppression of Their Voting Rights |
Current rating: 0 |
by various relevant news reports and links
(No verified email address) |
28 Aug 2004
|
As the campaign in Urbana to suppress student and minority political representation moves forward in the guise of the at-large councilmember proposal, it is interesting to find that voting rights are under attack nationwide. And these attacks are spawning resistance (and court cases).
Proponents of at-large voting often are the same people who complain about their tax money being mis-spent -- How about an explanation from them about why they support a proposal that will nearly inevitably result in expensive litigation for the city, leaving aside all the rest of the questionable results of at-large voting. |
Martha Irvine, AP
CHICAGO - Young Han tried to register to vote in the New York town where he attends college but got a letter telling him to cast an absentee ballot where his parents live, more than 2,000 miles away. In Virginia, Luther Lowe and Serene Alami were told much the same - their campus addresses at the College of William & Mary were deemed "temporary."
With so much emphasis on getting young people to the polls this election, the issue of where college students can register to vote is getting more attention. And some students - who believe they should have the right to vote where they live most of the year - are getting organized.
"We plan to push this issue," says Han, a 21-year old junior at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., who's originally from a Seattle suburb. "Students are being disenfranchised."
Han spent the summer interning in Washington, D.C., where he met Lowe and other students who share his cause. They formed the grass-roots Student Voting Rights Campaign.
Now the group is calling for a "day of action" on Sept. 23, urging students to register en masse - even if they meet with resistance.
Students in some states will find they have no problem, say researchers at the Institute for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Salisbury University in Maryland. They've found that, in recent years, more states have loosened voting restrictions on college students.
But there are always exceptions, especially in smaller towns.
"Local politicians are very unsure about students," says Michael O'Loughlin, a political science professor at Salisbury. "They enjoy having students pay (sales) taxes and contribute to the economy. But they are wary of how students could influence politics at a local level."
Ultimately, O'Loughlin and fellow researchers have found that students who attend college in states that force or "encourage" them to vote absentee are less likely to vote.
David Andrews, general voter registrar in Williamsburg, Va., says that's why he goes out of his way to help William & Mary students navigate the absentee process. He says he assisted about 2,000 vote absentee in the 2002 election.
But Virginia laws - "rules that apply to everyone," he says - make it unlikely that he'll let students register in his town.
At issue, he says, is the fact that dorms are considered temporary addresses, "like a hotel room or a time share." So when he gets a voter registration form with a campus address on it, he poses more questions to the applicant: What is the address on your driver's license? Where is your car registered?
If Williamsburg isn't the answer, the student probably won't be allowed to register there.
Some William & Mary students think that's unfair. They've filed a federal lawsuit demanding the right to vote in their college town and to run for city council.
They say students deserve to have a voice in local issues that directly affect them - housing ordinances, for instance.
"It makes no sense for me to vote in a city election where my parents live," says Lowe, a 22-year-old senior who is represented in the lawsuit. "I live in Williamsburg nine months out of the year."
There have been students who've overcome voting registration barriers.
Students at Prairie View A&M University in Texas won the right to vote in their county after settling a lawsuit of their own.
And in Oneida County, N.Y., attention brought by Han and other students at Hamilton College prompted officials there to stop sending out letters that told students to vote absentee. Han plans to register there when he returns for fall term.
Meanwhile, some students are challenging colleges and universities to provide ample voter registration materials to students - something federal law requires them to do.
Still others, including 20-year-old Eric Krassoi Peach, are working with such organizations as Rock the Vote.
The sophomore at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., has a goal of registering 1,000 students at his tiny school.
"That's a serious voting block," says Krassoi Peach, founder of Hendrix Community of Informed Voters, which distributes registration and candidate information to students.
Still others plan to vote absentee. They include 19-year-old Caitlin Davis, who attends Georgetown University but prefers to vote in her home state, California.
Davis - spokeswoman and resident "blogger" for the Web site "Register and Vote 2004" - says her main goal is to get people her age to vote, one way or another.
"A lot of people," she says, "are unaware of just how easy it is."
ON THE NET
http://www.studentsuffrage.com/
http://www.registerandvote2004.org/
---
Martha Irvine is a national writer specializing in coverage of people in their 20s and younger. She can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org
Copyright 2004 Associated Press
Related Articles on UC IMC:
http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display/19683/index.php
http://www.ucimc.org/feature/display/19244/index.php
http://www.ucimc.org/feature/display/19148/index.php |
Related stories on this site:
The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: People For the American Way Foundation and NAACP Release Report on Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America
| 
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
Comments
|
ACLU Asks Virginia Supreme Court to Allow College Student to Vote in Local Elections |
by American Civil Liberties Union
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Aug 2004
|
June 24, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WILLIAMSBURG, VA--The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia asked the Virginia Supreme Court on Tuesday to allow Serene Alami, a student at the College of William and Mary, to register to vote in the city of Williamsburg, where she currently resides.
Alami was one of several William and Mary students who were prevented by the Williamsburg voter registrar from registering to vote in local elections because their parents live in other jurisdictions.
"Some voter registrars seem to have decided to do whatever they can to keep students from voting in local elections," said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis. "Every student may not qualify to vote locally, but any student who no longer resides in her hometown and who has developed an interest in the community where she attends college, ought to be able to vote in that community."
Alami’s parents, who claim her as a dependent, reside in Roanoke, but Alami works, registers her car, resides and intends to remain in Williamsburg.
Alami and another student, Luther Lowe, whose application to register in Williamsburg was also denied for similar reasons, asked the Williamsburg Circuit Court to order the registrar to allow them to register to vote in local elections. The court ruled that Lowe should have been allowed to vote in Williamsburg, but it rejected Alami’s claim without providing clarification on its ruling.
The ACLU said it believes that many registrars in Virginia unconstitutionally deny students the right to vote in the jurisdictions where they attend school.
"When registrars block students from registering to vote in local elections they not only deprive them of a constitutional right, but they also discourage them from participating in our democracy," Willis said. "That is the exact opposite of what registrars ought to be doing."
Willis noted that students at Mary Washington College faced similar difficulties in Fredericksburg in 2000 after starting a campus organization to increase student participation in local politics. Likewise, in 2002, Virginia Tech students were rebuffed by the Blacksburg registrar after one student decided to run for mayor. After the ACLU complained, registrars in those localities indicated they would not block student applications.
Alami is represented by ACLU of Virginia Legal Director Rebecca K. Glenberg and Williamsburg attorney Richard E. Hill, Jr.
http://www.aclu.org/VotingRights/VotingRights.cfm?ID=16035&c=32
http://www.aclu.org |
|
Banning the Vote |
by Megan Tady
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Aug 2004
|
If only students would go out and vote.
Except their vote isn't welcome in Brunswick, Maine. Or in Prairie View, Texas. Or, as a matter of fact, in Utica, New York. All of these college towns -- and many others -- have local statutes that limit students from establishing residency and registering to vote.
Their vote is certainly not welcome in Williamsburg, Virginia, home to the College of William and Mary, where the city council has passed anti-student laws, blocked students from becoming residents, restricted students from registering to vote, and thwarted any effort made by students to change the discriminatory policies by running for office.
Among other things, the city council passed "owner occupancy" agreements on housing, making it increasingly difficult for students to find housing near campus, and evicted some students from their homes mid-semester for violating the archaic "three-to-a-house rule" -- no more than three unrelated people can live together in a house in Williamsburg.
So when three of the five seats on the city council were up for grabs in the spring of 2003, four students -- Serene Alami, Robert Forrest, Seth Saunders, and Luther Lowe, tired of not being able to voice their concerns in their town -- announced their candidacy. A week later, all four students received voter registration denials. The grounds? They didn't qualify as residents of Williamsburg.
Even though students used to be able to register to vote in Williamsburg using their dorm address, the registrar had begun to require students to fill out a tricky two-page questionnaire to determine residency, asking such questions as: Where is your car registered? Are you a dependent on your parent's tax return? What community activities are you involved in? (The questionnaire specified church.)
Using the results of the questionnaire, the Williamsburg registrar determined some students were ineligible to register to vote in Williamsburg, effectively banning them from participating in local politics.
Although the 26th Amendment guarantees students the right to vote and a 1979 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that students can vote where they attend school if they establish residency, it remains unclear what constitutes residency. Local election boards have been able to fill in the gaps, and under the Virginia Constitution, eligible voters must have a physical abode in a town with the intent to live there for an unlimited time.
"Because the law is so ambiguous, it leaves the decisions up to people who aren't legal experts about who has the right to vote," says Serene Alami, one of the four students who attempted to run for city council.
Both Lowe and Alami, with the help of the Virginia ACLU, challenged their denials, first in federal court, and then, when the case was sent back, in the circuit court. The judge overturned Lowe's denial because, although he is originally from Arkansas, he had committed to six years with the Virginia National Guard. Alami's registration denial, however, was upheld, with her in-state status and her attempt to run for a four-year seat on the city council not enough to prove she planned to live in Williamsburg for an "unlimited time."
"Students shouldn't have to join the National Guard to vote. It doesn't make sense for Serene to vote for the school board in Roanoke, where her parents live," Lowe says. "It makes sense for her to vote where the issues affect her most -- where we need crosswalks and get parking tickets. We should be able to vote where we have a direct stake in what's happening."
"Here I am trying to do what a good citizen should do -- voting and running for office to try to change things -- and somebody tells me I can't," Alami says.
Along with appealing her case, which is still pending, Alami put her energy into helping Lowe gain the 125 signatures needed to get him on the city council ballot. Only after she collected some of the signatures was she told by the city council that non-residents cannot collect signatures. The council only deemed 124 signatures "considerable," and Lowe was unable to get his name on the ballot.
"It just further illustrated how ludicrous this was and showed how they are actively working to ensure that students don't have a voice in the community," Lowe said.
Seth Saunders was also denied the right to run for city council in Williamsburg, and Rob Forrest quit school, moved off campus, sold his car, and got a local job in order to qualify for residency and run for a seat. He was not elected.
"It's frustrating to think that people habitually complain about youth being apathetic, but any effort made by youth to change that is shot down," Alami says. "And it's not just happening in Virginia."
Don't Rock the (V)Boat
It's happening all over the country. Despite the fact that students live in their college towns eight months of the year for four to five years and are counted by the U.S. census in their college towns, the practice of intimidating and harassing young voters is spreading to various college towns like a flu virus in a campus dorm -- from claiming voting will affect students' financial aid, to giving them lengthy questionnaires, to asking them to provide driver's licenses.
"If you have a university town that bars students from voting, you are effectively raising the voting age in that town," says Peter Maybarduk, cofounder of the voting rights organization Your Williamsburg.
Student disenfranchisement happened at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where the registrar turned students away after she asked misleading residency questions, and in other towns in Maine, including Bar Harbor, Gorham, Farmington and Standish.
Damien Cave's recent Rolling Stone article, "Mock the Vote," highlighted that it's also happened at Hamilton College in Utica, New York, at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, in Arkansas at Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University, and at the University of New Hampshire.
It also happened at Prairie View A&M University in Texas, where the district attorney intimidated students from voting by warning that a 10-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine would be issued to anyone caught "illegally voting." The students have since settled a lawsuit with Kitzman, who issued a public apology. Prairie View A&M was the site of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to allow students to vote where they attend school after black students were banned from voting 25 years ago.
"I don't know how this compares to women's suffrage or the Civil Rights movement," Alami says. "But I do know it's a systematic denial of a group of people their constitutional rights."
It isn't that students are being denied the right to vote outright -- they still have the option of voting by absentee ballot in their hometowns. But voting by absentee ballot isn't always a sufficient solution.
"It requires a lot of forethought, which many Americans, not just students, don't contemplate," Maybarduk says. "Beyond that, it still prevents them from voting on the issues that affect them where they live. It's much more difficult for students to stay up to speed on issues, and impossible to serve on commissions or introduce a ballot initiative. It goes against the meaning of teaching civic engagement in college."
A study titled "Democracy and College Student Voting," published by the Institute for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Salisbury College in 2001 and updated again this year, examines the effects of restrictive residency requirements for college students.
"The key question for both of these studies is, are there different residential barriers for students than other voters?" says Dr. Michael O'Loughlin, associate professor of Political Science at Salisbury and co-author of the study.
The study concluded that 21 states maintain unfair restrictive laws and practices with regard to college students, playing a detrimental role in youth voter turnout.
"If students have unusually high residential barriers to overcome, it's just one more added thing that will lower voter turnout," O'Loughlin says.
Taking Over the Town
Erecting these barriers to voting isn't always a conscious choice; some registrars simply don't know the law and are as confused as college students when it comes to residency regulations.
Others, however, are motivated to stop college students from voting because of a fear that they will "take over the town." In Williamsburg, for example, over half the population are college students, making the threat plausible.
"If you think about it, in a small town, a block of 300 or 400 voters could change the character of the city council or the mayor's office," O'Loughlin says.
That's what happened in New Paltz, New York, where 26-year-old Jason West was elected mayor and recently started marrying gay couples, causing some New Yorkers to shudder. West campaigned strongly on New Paltz's State University of New York campus, appealing to young voters who ousted the town's 16-year mayor.
Another argument used to justify banning students from voting in college towns is their transient lifestyle -- that they'll simply move away in four years, leaving behind the polices they help put in place. But, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 46% of Americans moved between 1995 and 2000; in other words, nearly half of the American public are as transient as college students. What's more, many states allow homeless people to vote and Virginia allows the homeless to vote "wherever they lay their head at night."
These flimsy excuses only help to discourage political participation in a country where the youth vote is already alarmingly low.
"If voters get rebuffed the first time they go vote, they might just say, 'The heck with it,'" says Kent Willis, associate director of the Voting Rights Project of the ACLU. "When election officials tell a student who is claimed as a dependent on his dad's taxes but has never lived with his dad, to go vote where his dad lives, students know they are being jerked around."
Yet some people see this type of disenfranchisement doing just the opposite of discouraging voters.
"It sends a message that there are people who care enough about young people voting to prevent it from happening," says Hans Reimer, Washington director of Rock the Vote. "It has an empowering effect -- if you don't want me to vote, that's exactly what I'm going to do."
It isn't just local elections that are a concern. The 2004 presidential elections loom large in people's minds.
"This election is going to be so close," says Reimer. "Because of that, the pressure to disenfranchise voters will be heightened. We can see the scenarios happening where local election boards, often not operating in the best interest of democracy, decide for partisan reasons to block votes."
I Want My Democracy
Students and voting rights organizations aren't taking their chances, and are pouring time and resources into fighting young voter disenfranchisement.
Rock the Vote is circulating a petition against voter suppression to send to the secretaries of state in all 50 states, asking for a detailed game plan to tackle the problem by July. They're also forming a coalition with organizations such as National Voice, Just Democracy, One Student, One Vote, and the New Voters Project to help give the issue national attention.
The Election Assistance Commission, in charge of administering the slippery Help America Vote Act -- legislation that will require voters to present valid I.D.s at the polls -- says they are dispensing $750,000 into a program dedicated to engaging college students in the electoral process ("If you can think of a hip hop name or a Beyonce name for the program, let me know," says Chairman DeForester B. Soaries Jr.)
Luther Lowe from William and Mary is in the process of creating a national organization called Suffrage Now to act as a watchdog for student voting rights, and Peter Maybarduk recently created a listserv called Student Vote, where students can post specific cases of voter disenfranchisement at studentvote (at) lists.riseup.net.
Finally, on Tuesday, May 11, the 30 Somethings Working Group, a group of 14 Democratic members of the House of Representatives under the age of 40, took to the House floor to talk about young voter suppression. Students can e-mail the group with incidents of voter suppression at 30SomethingDems (at) mail.house.gov.
With all this action, students are showing that they're not just going out to vote, they're going out to change the country.
"This needs to be an issue that is part of the public discourse and people need to realize that this is a constitutional problem that needs to be resolved," Lowe said. "If we can do this, we can really change the makeup of local governments across the United States."
Megan Tady is a 24-year-old freelance writer who lives in Western Massachusetts.
© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/18761/ |
|
What to Do |
by RocktheVote
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Aug 2004
|
Campus Campaign:: Home
Students all across the country have the right to vote, but they don't quite know what their rights really are. Is it okay that I'm not allowed to register to vote and vote where I go to school? Is it okay that I'm turned away? Is it okay? We've got the answers for you and we've got true stories of voter intimidation/suppression on campuses. We've posted things you can do to take action to ensure your right and other students' right to vote. Educate yourself with the information and empower yourself with action.
Follow this link for information on how to resist attempts to suppress student vioting rights:
http://www.rockthevote.com/rtv_campuscampaign.php |
|
Welcome to the Student Voting Rights Campaign! |
by Student Voting Rights Campaign
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Aug 2004
|
Welcome to the Student Voting Rights Campaign!
Our site is currently being renovated, and the new site will be relaunched September 2. Please visit us in a few days!
The Student Voting Rights Campaign is a network of students and advocates seeking to establish and ensure the right of students to vote where they attend school, and promoting the full participation of students in both local and national elections.
The efforts of the Williamsburg, Virginia registrar to prevent students from voting en masse in city council elections this spring, coupled with the parallel racially-charged registration challenges faced by students at Prairie View A&M in Waller County, Texas, and the varying and loosely defined local laws that all too often prohibit students from voting where they reside in towns across our country, evidence a national problem - a national barrier to youth participation in politics and to the right of students to vote. This problem requires a coordinated response from those of us who work on issues of youth voting.
Working closely with the Youth Vote Coalition, Project Democracy, the Brennan Center, Rock the Vote, the ACLU, IMPACT 2004, Mobilizing America’s Youth, Youth Venture and others, the Student Voting Rights Campaign will advance the cause of student voting rights by:
* Creating a comprehensive online information center on student voting rights, campaigns, studies, advocacy groups and legal cases, including portals to reports by partner organizations;
* Providing a detailed campaign model based upon student voting rights campaigns conducted in New Hampshire, Texas, New York, Arkansas and Virginia, among others, to student groups interested in
registering voters, resolving election law interpretation disputes and, when necessary, challenging
discriminatory election laws and practices where they attend school;
* Connecting local student campaigns and registration efforts to one another and to national youth voting and civil rights advocacy organizations (the Student Suffrage Network);
* Conducting statistical research into the effects of restrictive residency laws on local and national elections, voting demographics and youth engagement in politics;
* Supporting political and legal challenges to restrictive residency requirements, encouraging students to
engage the democratic process as both voters and candidates, and advocating for the establishment of a national standard guaranteeing students the right to vote where they attend school.
The Student Voting Rights Campaign moderates the Studentvote listserve, which presently reaches representatives of more than twenty-five voting rights organizations across the country. To subscribe, contact Peter Maybarduk at peter (at) studentsuffrage.com
We need your help. Correcting widespread problems of restrictive residency requirements and the discouragement of student voting will require a network of individuals researching, testing, challenging and exposing student disenfranchisement in towns throughout the United States.
Join us. Become an organizer and help develop our network, or sign up your group as a partner.
So long as students are systematically discouraged or prevented from engaging in electoral politics in the communities that they call home, we will have less young people on the voter rolls, we will have less vibrancy and innovation in our local politics, we will raise more citizens who become politically apathetic adults, we will retain a needlessly vast cultural age gap, our government will be less responsive to the concerns of the young and we will have a weaker democracy than we deserve.
So let’s change it. Welcome to the Student Voting Rights Campaign.
http://www.studentsuffrage.com/ |
|
