They happen to live, close to 9 months of the year, where they go to school. Yet, states like Virginia and South Carolina are going out of their way to prevent young people from voting where they spend most of their time, despite the fact that the Supreme Court long ago decided that it was legal for students to register to vote where they, you know, live.
The widespread practice of students’ registering to vote at their college address has set off a fracas in Virginia, a battleground state in the presidential election.
Late last month, as a voter-registration drive by supporters of Senator Barack Obama was signing up thousands of students at Virginia Tech, the local registrar of elections issued two releases incorrectly suggesting a range of dire possibilities for students who registered to vote at their college.
Young people tend to be more liberal than their elders, and while the article alleges no wrongdoing, it’s obvious that preventing college students from voting in battleground states if their parents don’t live there is likely to hurt Democrats more than Republicans. But at least one incident smacks of old school racial disenfranchisement.
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.