Confusion, Voting and Petty Malfeasance

The Times has an article discussing problems with student voting registration in Virginia. From the article, it sounds like it’s a genuine confusion on the requirements of Virginia’s voting laws and not another example of the Republican Party’s delightful habit of voter suppression.

However, the status of college students does raise some questions for voting. It is obvious to me that we need to encourage more people to vote, not less. The legal status of college students can make encouraging that hard. From the article:

“My understanding of state law has been that by declaring you’re voting here, you’re saying this is your primary residence, your domicile, and that while you can have many abodes or residences, you can only have one domicile,” Mr. Wertz said.

You can have many residences, but only one domicile. College students spend nine months a year at their university, in their dorms, living and working and participating in the community. Some participate more than others, but they are all bringing economic benefits to their college communities. Legally, of course, their parents still claim them as dependants for tax and insurance purposes. So, their “domicile” is at their parent’s house, where they spend a quarter of their time. That is one of the legal absurdities we all overlook because it’s easier to deal with it than fix the laws to agree. The article also notes what seems to be a far more sinister instance of a similar problem in Texas:

In 2003, in Waller County, Tex., the district attorney wrote a column in a local newspaper threatening to prosecute students at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university, for illegal voting. The project sued, and the district attorney backed down.

In the 1970s, that same county required Prairie View students who wanted to register to fill out a questionnaire asking, among other things, whether they owned property in the county, had an automobile registered there or belonged to any church, club or organization unrelated to the college. A challenge to that practice led the Supreme Court to uphold students’ rights to vote at their college address.

It’s very easy for all sorts of people to take advantage of college students. Stuck in a semi-adult twilight of childhood, they have to manage all sorts of legal problems: landlords who rent substandard houses, municipalities who see students as a drain of resources and, unfortunately, Board of Elections that wish to maintain party power. Perhaps its time for the federal government to take over and rationalize voting laws. Different states have different requirements and guidelines. This is an area where I can’t see any “state’s rights” justification outside of “state’s rights to suppress voters we don’t want.”

People are way more mobile then they were when these laws were enacted. They aren’t really prepared to deal with people who only live in a community for three or four years. People move all over the country following jobs, going to school, all sorts of reasons. It’s time that our voting laws reflected the reality that we live in, not the one that our great-grandparents did.