The Next Round of Disenfranchisement: Fight Back

See what these folks are doing?

They’re registering to vote at a Flobots concert we attended back in May.

They’re members of the 18-29 age demographic, a group electoral analysts have said will play a critical role in determining the outcome of the upcoming general election. Even though the youth vote made a big impact on the outcomes of the primaries earlier this year, new obstacles have arisen that might make it harder for some of America’s youth in certain areas of the country to vote in the general election.

On August 25, a county registrar in Virginia claimed that students attending school in the county risk their financial security if their home address is out-of-state and they register to vote in the county. He claimed students who registered to vote in the county under these circumstances could lose the ability to be declared as dependents on their parents’ tax returns, and said this could impact their finances while at college.

Talk about a turn-off to voting. It’s good for the students that the registrar was wrong. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said his statement was incorrect, and a 1979 Supreme Court decision affirmed students’ right to register to vote at their college address.

The county registrar, after questioning by civil rights lawyers, issued a clarification to the August 25 memo in this document and said it did not have a position on if any element of student’s finances would be affected by registering to vote outside their home county.

This is not the only recent story of potential disenfranchisement. Currently, there’s a political storm brewing in Michigan regarding the disenfranchisement of voters whose homes have been foreclosed, and we’ll keep you updated on the legal weather over there.

With the state registration deadlines for the general elections approaching, we must be even more critical of any and all apparent attempts by anyone to in any way disenfranchise voters without due and just cause. It is important for you make sure that you’re still registered to vote and that you have not been removed from registered voter lists. You too should have the chance to impact the course of the nation.

One of the best ways you can take direct action to make sure your voting rights are secure is utilizing our Rock Your Rights page. We’ve partnered with the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and other groups to protect and promote voting rights this year and beyond.

Fight for your right to vote on Election Day.

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Rock the Vote Bio: Rock the Vote was founded in 1990 to organize artists and fight against censorship of musicians. Since then we've evolved to focus on empowering young people to get involved in the political process. We use pop culture, peer-to-peer organizing, and the latest technology to raise visibility of politics and demystify the process of registering to vote. @rockthevote Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at 5:52 pm and is filed under rock the vote, voter registration, youth vote. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.