Election officials telling college students they can’t vote

Not cool.

Local elections officials in Colorado and two towns in South Carolina have been caught telling college students they can’t register and vote where they go to school.

This is simply not true. College students have the right – affirmed by a 1979 Supreme Court decision – to vote where they live during college.

When called out on this, officials in Colorado retracted their statement and higher-ups in South Carolina denied responsibility.

These shenanigans in Colorado and South Carolina follow hot on the heels of a recent incident in Montgomery County, VA where a local registrar issued a statement threatening college students with financial and legal harm if they registered to vote at school. The county issued a new statement after these threats were proven baseless.

I can’t tell you how angry this makes me.

Not only have students’ rights to vote been protected by the highest court in the land for nearly 30 years, but targeting a specific group of voters based solely on a shared demographic characteristic – being students – is insidious and reminiscent of the days when race and economic status were blatantly used to prevent people from voting. This statement puts it more eloquently than I ever could.

Trying to scare students away from registering and voting is a civil rights violation, pure and simple, and a stain on our democracy.

Put another way: “‘Voter residency requirements vary from state to state, but must meet the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution,’ said Jon Greenbaum, a voting rights expert with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Greenbaum said that what states and counties can’t do is adopt rules that treat one group of voters differently than others.”

And that’s the key. States make the election rules (so long as they comply with the Constitution) and they do vary – but singling out a group of voters is never OK. Equal protection and all.

Rock the Vote won’t stand for this – and we need your help to make sure all eligible voters can cast a ballot this year. There are two ways you can help.

1. Tell us if you’re wrongly turned away from registering or voting. Report online here or call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Lawyers are standing by and can help.

2. Sign up to volunteer with Rock Your Rights – over the next 39 days, we’ll be monitoring issues like this and taking action to prevent disenfranchisement.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 5:06 pm and is filed under student voting rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.