Mock the Vote

College students are discouraged
voting by local election boards

By Damien Cave
Rolling Stone


Like any good American citizen, young Han wanted to cast his ballot in
the presidential primaries. So in October, the sophomore at Hamilton
College walked into the office of the county election board in Utica,
New York, to register to vote. Han couldn't make it back to his home
state of Washington to participate in its caucuses -- they were being
held in February, the same week Hamilton requires sophomores to
declare a major -- so he decided to vote in the state where he
actually lives.

But at the election office, a county official told Han that only
"permanent residents" may register to vote. College students, she
informed the clean-cut twenty-year-old, must vote where their parents
live. "This is just how we've always done it," county election
commissioner Patricia DiSpirito told Rolling Stone. "A dorm is not a
permanent residence -- it just isn't."

In fact, DiSpirito is flat-out wrong. Federal and state courts have
clearly established that students have the right to vote where they go
to school, even if they live in a dorm. But interviews with college
students, civil-rights attorneys, political strategists and legal
experts reveal that election officials all over the country are
erecting illegal barriers to keep young voters from casting ballots.
From New Hampshire to California, officials have designed complex
questionnaires that prevent college students from registering, hired
high-powered attorneys to keep them off the rolls, shut down polling
places on campuses and even threatened to arrest and imprison young
voters. Much as local registrars in the South once used poll taxes and
literacy tests to deny the vote to black citizens, some county
election officials now employ an intimidating mix of legal bullying
and added paperwork to prevent civic-minded young people from casting
ballots. "Students have been singled out for outright discrimination,"
says Neal Rosenstein, government-reform coordinator for the New York
Public Interest Research Group. "If someone was challenging the voting
rights of a military person who is stationed somewhere temporarily,
we'd be screaming that it's not patriotic. There shouldn't be any less
of a standard for students, who work and pay sales taxes in those
communities."

When congress passed the Twenty-sixth Amendment in 1971, lowering the
voting age from twenty-one to eighteen, 11 million new voters gained
access to democracy. But nothing in the new law defined where they
should vote. At first, most local election officials assumed that
students belonged with their parents. Then, in 1979, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that students can vote where they go to school, if that is
where they establish residency.

Over the years, however, the court has refused to clarify what
constitutes residency for college students, leaving local election
officials to decide for themselves. As a result, the rules vary wildly
from zip code to zip code. Some registrars make it as easy as
possible, simply asking students what they consider their primary
address. Several states, including Pennsylvania, Texas and Michigan,
ban most added scrutiny as a form of illegal discrimination.

But in recent years, many election officials have been building a
variety of hurdles to make it more difficult for students to register
and vote. In May 2002, the city council in Saratoga Springs, New York,
shut down a polling place at Skidmore College, forcing students to
travel off-campus to vote. That same year, a judge in Arkansas tried
to block 1,000 students at Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson
State University from casting ballots, ruling that they must vote in
their hometowns -- even though the deadline for absentee ballots had
already passed. And when students from the University of New Hampshire
showed up at the polls on Election Day that year, poll workers handed
them a pamphlet warning them that voting locally could affect their
financial aid and taxes. The scare tactic worked: Many students left
without voting.

Refusing to register students is "a blatant form of
disenfranchisement," says Jennifer Weiser, who advocates for young
voters as associate counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice at New
York University. "It's clearly illegal."

In some cases, election officials simply don't seem to understand the
law. Jehmu Greene, president of Rock the Vote, was surprised by the
response when her group called state election offices in Oregon and
Washington about laws regarding student voting: "They were clueless
about the issue," says Greene.

In many cases, however, there's more than ignorance at work. In small
college towns, students often outnumber all other voters combined --
raising fears that they could determine the outcome of local
elections. The colonial town of Williamsburg, Virginia, has only 6,000
registered voters -- and 7,600 students at the College of William and
Mary. In January, when campus leaders began pushing students to
register and vote, the city responded by requiring every student to
fill out a two-page questionnaire detailing everything from their
personal finances to where their car is registered. Of an estimated
150 students who completed questionnaires, only four have been
registered. "They don't want students involved," says Rob Forrest, who
quit school and moved off campus so he could run for a seat on the
city council. "It's a cop-out to interpret the law like this -- and if
the law says that we're not supposed to get involved, then the law is
wrong."

There's no way to tell how many college students are being turned away
by local election boards -- but observers say it could be enough to
re-elect George Bush this fall. Voters under the age of twenty-four
favored the Democrats by at least twenty percentage points in each of
the past three presidential elections, and polls this year indicate
that they favor John Kerry by as many as ten points. If the race is as
close as last time, keeping turnout down among voters at one major
college campus in each battleground state could tip the election to
the Republicans.

Students who are denied the right to register at college can always
opt to vote by absentee ballot -- but requiring voters to plan ahead
almost always reduces participation. "It is likely to depress turnout,
because it is a harder burden than just walking up to a poll," says
Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American
Electorate. What's more, some election officials are also keeping
students from the polls by making sure the polls are hard to get to.
At Northwestern, Sacramento State and the State University of New York
at Oswego, voting registrars have resisted demands to set up polling
places on campus. "This is an intentional act of disenfranchisement,"
says the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "Students don't just have the right to
vote -- they have the right to vote where they live."

Perhaps the most blatant attempt to intimidate young voters took place
at Prairie View A&M University in Texas. The school is the last place
one would expect a battle over voting rights: Twenty-five years ago,
when black students at A&M were denied the vote by white county
officials, the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling affirming that
students can cast ballots where they go to school. But in November,
District Attorney Oliver Kitzman published an open letter in a local
newspaper accusing unnamed citizens of "feigned residency." Kitzman
warned that any "illegal voting" would lead to a ten-year prison
sentence and a $10,000 fine.

Students fought back. On Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, 1,500
students marched through the Texas town in protest, and Rock the Vote
held a rally on February 23rd with Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest.
"Students have to pay for food and shop in the town, so I think they
should have some say in how it's run," Q-Tip says. The next day, under
pressure from state and federal authorities, Kitzman settled a
voting-rights lawsuit filed by A&M students and issued a public
apology.

But despite the victory in Prairie View, some observers worry that the
widespread discrimination will sour students on the political process
for years to come. "Students complain to me all the time that county
officials are thwarting their attempts to get involved," says Donna
Brazile, who managed Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. "These
kids are new to civic engagement. Students, who are often taking part
in democracy for the first time, should be given every possible
opportunity to vote. Instead, they face all these barriers."

Even students who manage to register may find themselves unable to
vote in November. Under the new Help America Vote Act, voters must now
present valid identification when they show up at the polls -- another
obstacle for students whose driver's licenses often reflect their old
addresses.

But many students may not even get far enough to deal with the new
law. In New York, after a professor at Hamilton College called
election officials on behalf of Young Han, they finally agreed to let
him register. So Han resubmitted his application. But a week later, he
received another rejection letter, stating that students are
encouraged to "vote from their home county."

"It seems ridiculous that someone would have to go through all this
just to register and take part in the political process," Han says.
"Everyone talks about how young people don't get involved -- but maybe
it's because they make it this difficult."