(Opinion crossposted from Brainstorm)
In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, we learn that Randy Wertz, registrar of the county where Virginia Tech is located, issued a statement last week saying that under state law, any Virginia Tech students who registered to vote by listing their campus addresses would be changing their permanent addresses.
Wertz added that this act could affect their eligibility for scholarships and their taxes, and would oblige them to change car registrations and their drivers’ licenses to reflect their permanent address in the college town—something that the Obama campaign noted was a judgment call, and was rarely, if ever, enforced. Some people thought that in singling out students with his statement, Wertz was discriminating against them and, more to the point, trying to tamp down the power of younger, presumably more liberal, voters.
Two days later, Mr. Wertz backed off from what sounded, to some, like intimidation, saying the county cannot give out tax advice. Wertz’s comments to a local newspaper are quoted in the Chronicle article: “They thought we might be intimidating the students and keeping them from registering.” He added, “That certainly was not our intent.”
Let’s put aside partisan politics for a moment and ask if, in principle, college students should be permitted to vote as registered voters in the town and state of their college instead of their hometown and state.
On the one hand, long-time denizens of college towns often object, with some justification, to hundreds if not thousands of college students flooding their voter registration rosters even though those students are present in their towns for only four years. In lots of places, college students vastly outnumber long-time residents.
On the other hand, college students have a perfect right a) to vote with as much ease as every other citizen—which means voting in their college town; and b) to exercise their right to vote if they meet the legal standard for residency—which they do, most of the time, since they’re in residence for at least eight months of the year. College students know as well as everybody else that absentee voting is always cumbersome and is best avoided if you want to insure you cast your ballot in a particular election.
Yes, most students are temporary residents of their college towns, departing forever (well, not forever—they come back for the alumni reunion beer and football games) within minutes of receiving their sheepskins. Yet their transience is, in principle, no more and no less than that of renters or even homeowners who buy a home, move in and then sell it and move out in under six months.
It’s common knowledge that college students tend to be more liberal than the population at large, which is one of the concerns people in smaller towns, in particular, often have when they’re objecting to permitting them to vote in their towns. On the other hand, what, really, is the threat college students pose, in practical terms, to towns, counties, and states? Most students register to vote in their college towns in order to vote in one election, and one election only—the presidential election—and rarely bother with, let alone vote on, any of the town or county issues where the college exists.
On the other other hand, there’s nothing preventing college students from suddenly waking up and voting as a student bloc on small-town or county issues, and it’s reasonable for long-time residents of a town to fear this.
Unless we want to regress to a situation where only those who own property have the right to vote, or tighten the restrictions on voting so that it’s easy for some and difficult for others, it’s best to get out of the business of preventing college students from exercising their most fundamental right. We must live up to our claim, as well as our desire, to be the world’s greatest democracy.
