Rolling
Stone Magazine
May 5, 2004
Mock the Vote:
By Damien Cave
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."
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