Ravenwood - 08/31/04 06:00 AM
In some college towns, students are having trouble registering to vote. Students with on-campus addresses are typically denied registration because the address is considered "temporary".
When your's truly was in college, a story circulated about how local authorities had tried to deny all students (on and off-campus) the right to register. They argued in court that the transient nature of students would skew local politics. In Blacksburg, a town of 35,000 (with about 30,000 of them students), that could very well be true. But judges ruled that you could not permit or deny a person voter registration based solely on how they might vote. If a student wanted to claim their residence locally, the town couldn't stop them. Apparently living on-campus has given them a mechanism to do just that.
Personally, I think a student that lives nearly 10 months out of the year away at college should not only be able to, but has a vested interest in local elections.
Many college towns, who owe their success (if not their existence) to the students, do everything in their power to ensure that students cannot influence local policy.
Blacksburg is a prime example of this effect. For a town that would be nothing more than a backwater burg full of rednecks without VT, they are extremely hostile to students. Everything from residency laws to selective enforcement of noise ordinances are skewed against those "damn college kids."
Posted by: Bourbaki at August 31, 2004 10:43 AMThe issue, of course, is that 18-22 year olds are far from wise. It's one thing to give them a voice in politics when they are a few percent of the local population. It's another thing when they have most of the votes in town.
Or that's the theory anyhow. OTOH, the worst thing I've heard of college students voting in was when they decriminalized marijuana in Madison, Wisconsin. Wait a minute, that's something I've been pushing for for forty years.
Posted by: markm at August 31, 2004 4:35 PM""The issue, of course, is that 18-22 year olds are far from wise. It's one thing to give them a voice in politics when they are a few percent of the local population. It's another thing when they have most of the votes in town. ""
yeah..and those of us over 22 have done a really good job so far.....:) (ask someone from New York about the state budget :)
Besides.. college students at least are (in theory) interested in learning... might put them ahead of the people around them.
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