Snapshot of Student Voting

(This post was co-written by Tova Andrea Wang, TCF Democracy Fellow and vice president of research at Common Cause).

In an election cycle that witnessed an increase in young voter turnout across the country during the primaries, Rock the Vote (RTV) predicts that young voters will turn out in such high numbers in four states in November that their votes will impact the outcome of those states’ elections. The four states RTV predicts will feel the greatest impact of young voters are Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado and Ohio. As a forthcoming report by Common Cause and The Century Foundation, details, of the many young voters out there, a significant number of them are also student voters, who too often must confront unique obstacles to voting.  Given the key role students will play this year – and the possible backlash by some partisans to prevent them from doing so – such problems could influence how large of an impact they will be able to have in these states and throughout the country. 

Of the four states cited by RTV, Virginia stands out as the most likely to pose problems for students attempting to vote while at school. Establishing residency is frequently one of the larger hurdles that students must overcome when seeking to vote at school and Virginia sets that hurdle very high with some of the strictest residency requirements in the country. In addition to burdensome residency requirements, Virginia’s State Board of Elections’ student voter guidelines have long been ambiguous and misleading. Its student voting information website directs students to a ‘self-guided’ questionnaire meant to “assist applicants” in determining their residency and includes questions on their plans following school and whether their parents claim them as dependents on their tax returns, but really seems to be designed to deter student voting.

Just recently, a confused local election office in Blacksburg, Virginia used the state’s guidelines to issue two releases on student voting that turned out to provide blatantly misleading information. The two releases issued by the local registrar’s  office laid out the potential ‘consequences’ students could face for registering to vote in Blacksburg; these false ‘consequences’ included complications with theirs or their parents’ taxes, scholarships and car insurance. This information was false. After an outcry by voting right advocates, the Virginia’s State Board of Elections said that they will clarify their guidelines. But the damage has been done.  The county registrar reported that several students have canceled their registrations based on concerns of the consequences outlined in the original releases.

As indicated by the large turnout around the country during the primaries, students will be voting in big numbers in every state—not just those highlighted by RTV. As part of our new report, we review the potential challenges that student voters may face in ten key battleground states, including the four cited by RTV.

One of the non-RTV states that Voting in 2008 reviews is Georgia, which has acceptable student voting policies on paper but experienced an incredibly disturbing case of voter intimidation directed at students just last fall. Students in Statesboro, Georgia confronted severe voter intimidation while attempting to participate in their local elections. Nine hundred students were faced with challenges to their voter registrations and misinformed that their Statesboro “registrations could impact their parents’ taxes.” Although the people who issued the challenges were eventually forced to withdraw them, the impact on student voter turnout was severe: the Associated Press reported that over “60 percent of the registered voters who were challenged did not show up at the polls.”

The extent of problems that students will have as they attempt to register and head to the polls this fall will vary from state and, as the Virginia and Georgia cases demonstrate, sometimes county by county, depending on the local election administrator. For all of those student voters out there, anticipating their chance to help write history but uncertain of the obstacles they face, the Brennan Center has a website with an interactive map that can arm students with basic information on what to expect. It provides a brief rundown of the residency and voter identification requirements of each state. It also has a list of FAQs that provides students with the facts on how voter registration can impact financial concerns such as taxes, insurance and tuition.

Given their new status as a key constituency, being able to find such straightforward information will be invaluable – indeed necessary -- for students who may well be confronted with misleading information and challenges to their rights.

Comments

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