[Davis Democrats] denying college students the vote
G Richard Yamagata PhD
yamagata at virtual-markets.net
Sat May 22 01:23:53 PDT 2004
Greetings Davis Democrat Club list,
This e-mail was sent to me by Adrienne Kandell and it was requested that I
forward it to the list. Adrienne felt that it was important for all to see
this.
Take care,
Richard
Dear DDC,
Relevant info from this article.
1. Under the Help America Vote Act, voters can be turned away from the
polls if they don't have valid ID with them. (If this is true, we need to
warn people when they register and when they prepare to vote.)
2. Many counties in the country are making it hard for students to vote.
While some tactics involve threats (financial aid loss or even prison for
inconsistent "residency" status), others involve inconvenience. The article
says officials refuse to open a polling place at "at Northwestern,
Sacramento State and the State University of New York at Oswego." Am I
reading this right that they're talking of Sac State? Should we be calling
Sac County officials?
Adrienne
-----Original Message-----
From: natandben at aol.com [mailto:natandben at aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 6:47 AM
To: adrienne at dcn.davis.ca.us; James Schwab
Subject: Fw: Re: Fwd: Article
Subject: Re: Fwd: Article
Date: 2004/05/19
From: roliving at jps.net
To: Shielda Trotter
CC: natalie &ben wormeli
Is this happening in Davis? I have not heard of any cases like this
originating from UCD or local Community College outreaches. Someone needs to
contact the ASB at UCD to find out. We can check with Freddie Oakley to make
sure it isn't happening. I may forward her this article. Dick ----------
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story?id=5993354
Mock the Vote College students are discouraged from voting by local election
boards
By Damien Cave
Like any good American citizen, young Han wanted to cast his ballot in the
presidential primaries. So in October, the sophomore at Hamilton College
walked into the office of the county election board in Utica, New York, to
register to vote. Han couldn't make it back to his home state of Washington
to participate in its caucuses -- they were being held in February, the same
week Hamilton requires sophomores to declare a major -- so he decided to
vote in the state where he actually lives. But at the election office, a
county official told Han that only "permanent residents"may register to
vote. College students, she informed the clean-cut twenty-year-old, must
vote where their parents live. "This is just how we've always done
it,"county election commissioner Patricia DiSpirito told Rolling Stone. "A
dorm is not a permanent residence -- it just isn't."In fact, DiSpirito is
flat-out wrong. Federal and state courts have clearly established that
students have the right to vote where they go to school, even if they live
in a dorm. But interviews with college students, civil-rights attorneys,
political strategists and legal experts reveal that election officials all
over the country are erecting illegal barriers to keep young voters from
casting ballots. From New Hampshire to California, officials have designed
complex questionnaires that prevent college students from registering, hired
high-powered attorneys to keep them off the rolls, shut down polling places
on campuses and even threatened to arrest and imprison young voters. Much as
local registrars in the South once used poll taxes and literacy tests to
deny the vote to black citizens, some county election officials now employ
an intimidating mix of legal bullying and added paperwork to prevent
civic-minded young people from casting ballots. "Students have been singled
out for outright discrimination,"says Neal Rosenstein, government-reform
coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group. "If someone was
challenging the voting rights of a military person who is stationed
somewhere temporarily, we'd be screaming that it's not patriotic. There
shouldn't be any less of a standard for students, who work and pay sales
taxes in those communities."When congress passed the Twenty-sixth Amendment
in 1971, lowering the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen, 11 million new
voters gained access to democracy. But nothing in the new law defined where
they should vote. At first, most local election officials assumed that
students belonged with their parents. Then, in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that students can vote where they go to school, if that is where they
establish residency. Over the years, however, the court has refused to
clarify what constitutes residency for college students, leaving local
election officials to decide for themselves. As a result, the rules vary
wildly from zip code to zip code. Some registrars make it as ea sy as
possible, simply asking students what they consider their primary address.
Several states, including Pennsylvania, Texas and Michigan, ban most added
scrutiny as a form of illegal discrimination. But in recent years, many
election officials have been building a variety of hurdles to make it more
difficult for students to register and vote. In May 2002, the city council
in Saratoga Springs, New York, shut down a polling place at Skidmore
College, forcing students to travel off-campus to vote. That same year, a
judge in Arkansas tried to block 1,000 students at Ouachita Baptist
University and Henderson State University from casting ballots, ruling that
they must vote in their hometowns -- even though the deadline for absentee
ballots had already passed. And when students from the University of New
Hampshire showed up at the polls on Election Day that year, poll workers
handed them a pamphlet warning them that voting locally could affect their
financial aid and taxes. The scare tactic worked: Many students left without
voting. Refusing to register students is "a blatant form of
disenfranchisement,"says Jennifer Weiser, who advocates for young voters as
associate counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
"It's clearly illegal."In some cases, election officials simply don't seem
to understand the law. Jehmu Greene, president of Rock the Vote, was
surprised by the response when her group called state election offices in
Oregon and Washington about laws regarding student voting: "They were
clueless about the issue,"says Greene. In many cases, however, there's more
than ignorance at work. In small college towns, students often outnumber all
other voters combined -- raising fears that they could determine the outcome
of local elections. The colonial town of Williamsburg, Virginia, has only
6,000 registered voters -- and 7,600 students at the College of William and
Mary. In January, when campus leaders began pushing students to register and
vote, the city resp onded by requiring every student to fill out a two-page
questionnaire detailing everything from their personal finances to where
their car is registered. Of an estimated 150 students who completed
questionnaires, only four have been registered. "They don't want students
involved,"says Rob Forrest, who quit school and moved off campus so he could
run for a seat on the city council. "It's a cop-out to interpret the law
like this -- and if the law says that we're not supposed to get involved,
then the law is wrong."There's no way to tell how many college students are
being turned away by local election boards -- but observers say it could be
enough to re-elect George Bush this fall. Voters under the age of
twenty-four favored the Democrats by at least twenty percentage points in
each of the past three presidential elections, and polls this year indicate
that they favor John Kerry by as many as ten points. If the race is as close
as last time, keeping turnout down among voters at one major college campus
in each battleground state could tip the election to the Republicans.
Students who are denied the right to register at college can always opt to
vote by absentee ballot -- but requiring voters to plan ahead almost always
reduces participation. "It is likely to depress turnout, because it is a
harder burden than just walking up to a poll,"says Curtis Gans, director of
the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. What's more, some
election officials are also keeping students from the polls by making sure
the polls are hard to get to. At Northwestern, Sacramento State and the
State University of New York at Oswego, voting registrars have resisted
demands to set up polling places on campus. "This is an intentional act of
disenfranchisement,"says the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "Students don't just have
the right to vote -- they have the right to vote where they live."Perhaps
the most blatant attempt to intimidate young voters took place at Prairie
View A&M University in Texas. The school i s the last place one would expect
a battle over voting rights: Twenty-five years ago, when black students at
A&M were denied the vote by white county officials, the Supreme Court issued
its landmark ruling affirming that students can cast ballots where they go
to school. But in November, District Attorney Oliver Kitzman published an
open letter in a local newspaper accusing unnamed citizens of "feigned
residency."Kitzman warned that any "illegal voting"would lead to a ten-year
prison sentence and a $10,000 fine. Students fought back. On Martin Luther
King Jr.'s birthday, 1,500 students marched through the Texas town in
protest, and Rock the Vote held a rally on February 23rd with Q-Tip from A
Tribe Called Quest. "Students have to pay for food and shop in the town, so
I think they should have some say in how it's run,"Q-Tip says. The next day,
under pressure from state and federal authorities, Kitzman settled a
voting-rights lawsuit filed by A&M students and issued a public apology. But
despite the victory in Prairie View, some observers worry that the
widespread discrimination will sour students on the political process for
years to come. "Students complain to me all the time that county officials
are thwarting their attempts to get involved,"says Donna Brazile, who
managed Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. "These kids are new to
civic engagement. Students, who are often taking part in democracy for the
first time, should be given every possible opportunity to vote. Instead,
they face all these barriers."Even students who manage to register may find
themselves unable to vote in November. Under the new Help America Vote Act,
voters must now present valid identification when they show up at the
polls -- another obstacle for students whose driver's licenses often reflect
their old addresses. But many students may not even get far enough to deal
with the new law. In New York, after a professor at Hamilton College called
election officials on behalf of Young Han, they finally agreed to let him
register. So Han resubmitted his application. But a week later, he received
another rejection letter, stating that students are encouraged to "vote from
their home county.""It seems ridiculous that someone would have to go
through all this just to register and take part in the political
process,"Han says. "Everyone talks about how young people don't get
involved -- but maybe it's because they make it this difficult."
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1400" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=255450811-19052004>(Richard, this is to forward to DDC
members.)</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=255450811-19052004>Relevant info from this article.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=255450811-19052004>1. Under the Help America Vote Act, voters
can be
turned away from the polls if they don't have valid ID with them. (If
this
is true, we need to warn people when they register and when they prepare to
vote.)</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=255450811-19052004>2. Many counties in the country are making it
hard for students to vote. While some tactics involve threats (financial
aid loss or even prison for inconsistent "residency" status), others involve
inconvenience. The article says officials refuse to open a polling place
at "a<FONT face="Times New Roman" color=#000000 size=3>t Northwestern,
Sacramento State and the State University of New York at Oswego." Am I
reading this right that they're talking of Sac State? Should we be
calling
Sac County officials?</FONT></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" color=#000000 size=3><SPAN
class=255450811-19052004></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=255450811-19052004>Adrienne</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN
class=255450811-19052004></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma
size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B> natandben at aol.com
[mailto:natandben at aol.com]<BR><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, May 19, 2004 6:47
AM<BR><B>To:</B> adrienne at dcn.davis.ca.us; James Schwab<BR><B>Subject:</B> Fw:
Re: Fwd: Article<BR><BR></FONT></DIV><BR><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD noWrap bgColor=#f0f0f0><B>Subject: </B>Re: Fwd: Article</TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD noWrap bgColor=#f0f0f0><B>Date: </B>2004/05/19</TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD noWrap bgColor=#f0f0f0><B>From: </B>roliving at jps.net</TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD noWrap bgColor=#cccccc><B>To: </B>Shielda Trotter
<STROTTER at CAL.NET></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD noWrap bgColor=#cccccc><B>CC: </B>natalie &ben wormeli
<NATANDBEN at AOL.COM></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<DIV></FONT>Is this happening in Davis? I have not heard of any cases like this
originating from UCD or local Community College outreaches. Someone needs to
contact the ASB at UCD to find out. We can check with Freddie Oakley to make
sure it isn't happening. I may forward her this article. Dick ---------- </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story?id=5993354">http://www.rollings
tone.com/news/story?id=5993354</A>
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Mock the Vote College students are discouraged from voting by local
election boards </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>By Damien Cave </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Like any good American citizen, young Han wanted to cast his ballot in the
presidential primaries. So in October, the sophomore at Hamilton College walked
into the office of the county election board in Utica, New York, to register to
vote. Han couldn't make it back to his home state of Washington to participate
in its caucuses -- they were being held in February, the same week Hamilton
requires sophomores to declare a major -- so he decided to vote in the state
where he actually lives. But at the election office, a county official told Han
that only "permanent residents"may register to vote. College students, she
informed the clean-cut twenty-year-old, must vote where their parents live.
"This is just how we've always done it,"county election commissioner Patricia
DiSpirito told Rolling Stone. "A dorm is not a permanent residence -- it just
isn't."In fact, DiSpirito is flat-out wrong. Federal and state courts have
clearly established that students have the right to vote where they go to
school, even if they live in a dorm. But interviews with college students,
civil-rights attorneys, political strategists and legal experts reveal that
election officials all over the country are erecting illegal barriers to keep
young voters from casting ballots. From New Hampshire to California, officials
have designed complex questionnaires that prevent college students from
registering, hired high-powered attorneys to keep them off the rolls, shut down
polling places on campuses and even threatened to arrest and imprison young
voters. Much as local registrars in the South once used poll taxes and literacy
tests to deny the vote to black citizens, some county election officials now
employ an intimidating mix of legal bullying and added paperwork to prevent
civic-minded young people from casting ballots. "Students have been singled out
for outright discrimination,"says Neal Rosenstein, government-reform
coordinator
for the New York Public Interest Research Group. "If someone was challenging
the
voting rights of a military person who is stationed somewhere temporarily, we'd
be screaming that it's not patriotic. There shouldn't be any less of a standard
for students, who work and pay sales taxes in those communities."When congress
passed the Twenty-sixth Amendment in 1971, lowering the voting age from
twenty-one to eighteen, 11 million new voters gained access to democracy. But
nothing in the new law defined where they should vote. At first, most local
election officials assumed that students belonged with their parents. Then, in
1979, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that students can vote where they go to
school, if that is where they establish residency. Over the years, however, the
court has refused to clarify what constitutes residency for college students,
leaving local election officials to decide for themselves. As a result, the
rules vary wildly from zip code to zip code. Some registrars make it as ea
sy as
possible, simply asking students what they consider their primary address.
Several states, including Pennsylvania, Texas and Michigan, ban most added
scrutiny as a form of illegal discrimination. But in recent years, many
election
officials have been building a variety of hurdles to make it more difficult for
students to register and vote. In May 2002, the city council in Saratoga
Springs, New York, shut down a polling place at Skidmore College, forcing
students to travel off-campus to vote. That same year, a judge in Arkansas
tried
to block 1,000 students at Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State
University from casting ballots, ruling that they must vote in their hometowns
-- even though the deadline for absentee ballots had already passed. And when
students from the University of New Hampshire showed up at the polls on
Election
Day that year, poll workers handed them a pamphlet warning them that voting
locally could affect their financial aid and taxes. The scare tactic worked:
Many students left without voting. Refusing to register students is "a blatant
form of disenfranchisement,"says Jennifer Weiser, who advocates for young
voters
as associate counsel of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
"It's clearly illegal."In some cases, election officials simply don't seem to
understand the law. Jehmu Greene, president of Rock the Vote, was surprised by
the response when her group called state election offices in Oregon and
Washington about laws regarding student voting: "They were clueless about the
issue,"says Greene. In many cases, however, there's more than ignorance at
work.
In small college towns, students often outnumber all other voters combined --
raising fears that they could determine the outcome of local elections. The
colonial town of Williamsburg, Virginia, has only 6,000 registered voters --
and
7,600 students at the College of William and Mary. In January, when campus
leaders began pushing students to register and vote, the city resp onded by
requiring every student to fill out a two-page questionnaire detailing
everything from their personal finances to where their car is registered. Of an
estimated 150 students who completed questionnaires, only four have been
registered. "They don't want students involved,"says Rob Forrest, who quit
school and moved off campus so he could run for a seat on the city council.
"It's a cop-out to interpret the law like this -- and if the law says that
we're
not supposed to get involved, then the law is wrong."There's no way to tell how
many college students are being turned away by local election boards -- but
observers say it could be enough to re-elect George Bush this fall. Voters
under
the age of twenty-four favored the Democrats by at least twenty percentage
points in each of the past three presidential elections, and polls this year
indicate that they favor John Kerry by as many as ten points. If the race is as
close as last time, keeping turnout down among voters at one major college
campus in each battleground state could tip the election to the Republicans.
Students who are denied the right to register at college can always opt to vote
by absentee ballot -- but requiring voters to plan ahead almost always reduces
participation. "It is likely to depress turnout, because it is a harder burden
than just walking up to a poll,"says Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for
the Study of the American Electorate. What's more, some election officials are
also keeping students from the polls by making sure the polls are hard to get
to. At Northwestern, Sacramento State and the State University of New York at
Oswego, voting registrars have resisted demands to set up polling places on
campus. "This is an intentional act of disenfranchisement,"says the Rev. Jesse
Jackson. "Students don't just have the right to vote -- they have the right to
vote where they live."Perhaps the most blatant attempt to intimidate young
voters took place at Prairie View A&M University in Texas. The school i s
the last place one would expect a battle over voting rights: Twenty-five years
ago, when black students at A&M were denied the vote by white county
officials, the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling affirming that students
can cast ballots where they go to school. But in November, District Attorney
Oliver Kitzman published an open letter in a local newspaper accusing unnamed
citizens of "feigned residency."Kitzman warned that any "illegal voting"would
lead to a ten-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine. Students fought back. On
Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, 1,500 students marched through the Texas
town
in protest, and Rock the Vote held a rally on February 23rd with Q-Tip from A
Tribe Called Quest. "Students have to pay for food and shop in the town, so I
think they should have some say in how it's run,"Q-Tip says. The next day,
under
pressure from state and federal authorities, Kitzman settled a voting-rights
lawsuit filed by A&M students and issued a public apology. But despite the
victory in Prairie View, some observers worry that the widespread
discrimination
will sour students on the political process for years to come. "Students
complain to me all the time that county officials are thwarting their attempts
to get involved,"says Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's presidential
campaign
in 2000. "These kids are new to civic engagement. Students, who are often
taking
part in democracy for the first time, should be given every possible
opportunity
to vote. Instead, they face all these barriers."Even students who manage to
register may find themselves unable to vote in November. Under the new Help
America Vote Act, voters must now present valid identification when they
show up
at the polls -- another obstacle for students whose driver's licenses often
reflect their old addresses. But many students may not even get far enough to
deal with the new law. In New York, after a professor at Hamilton College
called
election officials on behalf of Young Han, they finally agreed to let him
register. So Han resubmitted his application. But a week later, he received
another rejection letter, stating that students are encouraged to "vote from
their home county.""It seems ridiculous that someone would have to go through
all this just to register and take part in the political process,"Han says.
"Everyone talks about how young people don't get involved -- but maybe it's
because they make it this difficult." <BR><BR><BR><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>
G Richard Yamagata PhD
CEO/President VME Inc. http://www.vme.net/
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G Richard Yamagata is a member of the Davis Community Network Board of
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