College Students Organize for Right to Vote
Student voting rights is going to be a hot topic during the month of September. Rock the Vote is joining with the New Voter’s Project, Student Voting Rights Campaign and attorneys across the country for a College Vote Initiative that aims to educate students about their voting rights. But what rights do students really have?
Federal and state laws make it clear that students have the right to vote wherever a student considers “home”. Legally, this means establishing residency in the county where you are trying to vote. Residency requirements vary by state and county. However, students everywhere must be treated like any other citizen when registering to vote. So, if a student voter registration form is rejected, the burden falls on the local registrar to demonstrate that they have not raised the residency standard for student voters.
Sometimes the lines can be blurry. Several students across the country have gone to court to prove that they are residents of their college community and should be allowed to register to vote in that county.
The most insidious form of student voter intimidation, however, may be the dissemination of incorrect information about the impact voter registration may have on a student’s eligibility for financial aid, health insurance or a parent’s right to claim a student as a dependent on tax returns. The College Vote Initiative aims to dispel these and other misconceptions about voter registration that may discourage students from registering to vote through an educational campaign.
The coalition is also actively investigating cases of student voter intimidation. Earlier this year, a District Attorney in Texas named Oliver Kitzman threatened to prosecute a student at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university, for registering to vote. Mr. Kitzman publicly stated, “it’s not right for any college student to vote where they do not have permanent residency,” exploiting confusion around the term ‘permanent residency’ to discourage students from registering to vote.
Rock the Vote held a town hall on the Prairie View campus to challenge Mr. Kitzman to set the record straight on student voting and the ‘permanent residency’ standard, and Texas Secretary of State Greg Abbott stepped forward to refute the district attorney’s statement. The students went on to file two lawsuits for voter intimidation with the ACLU of Texas, the NAACP, the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, and People for the American Way.
If you have a case of student vote suppression to report, go to www.rockthevote.com/campusvoteand be sure to join our national day of action on September 23!
Federal and state laws make it clear that students have the right to vote wherever a student considers “home”. Legally, this means establishing residency in the county where you are trying to vote. Residency requirements vary by state and county. However, students everywhere must be treated like any other citizen when registering to vote. So, if a student voter registration form is rejected, the burden falls on the local registrar to demonstrate that they have not raised the residency standard for student voters.
Sometimes the lines can be blurry. Several students across the country have gone to court to prove that they are residents of their college community and should be allowed to register to vote in that county.
The most insidious form of student voter intimidation, however, may be the dissemination of incorrect information about the impact voter registration may have on a student’s eligibility for financial aid, health insurance or a parent’s right to claim a student as a dependent on tax returns. The College Vote Initiative aims to dispel these and other misconceptions about voter registration that may discourage students from registering to vote through an educational campaign.
The coalition is also actively investigating cases of student voter intimidation. Earlier this year, a District Attorney in Texas named Oliver Kitzman threatened to prosecute a student at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university, for registering to vote. Mr. Kitzman publicly stated, “it’s not right for any college student to vote where they do not have permanent residency,” exploiting confusion around the term ‘permanent residency’ to discourage students from registering to vote.
Rock the Vote held a town hall on the Prairie View campus to challenge Mr. Kitzman to set the record straight on student voting and the ‘permanent residency’ standard, and Texas Secretary of State Greg Abbott stepped forward to refute the district attorney’s statement. The students went on to file two lawsuits for voter intimidation with the ACLU of Texas, the NAACP, the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, and People for the American Way.
If you have a case of student vote suppression to report, go to www.rockthevote.com/campusvoteand be sure to join our national day of action on September 23!
posted by Anonymous at 11:15 AM
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