It has Begun: Dirty tricks to step on the vote

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Warning for College Student voters

Last week, Virginia’s Montgomery County, home to Virginia Tech, issued a press release regarding proper protocol for college students registering to vote. In interviews with Inside Higher Ed Tuesday, it was described by turns as “unsubstantiated,” “chilling,” and (more generously) as not “incredibly encouraging or friendly.”

It reads, in part: “The Code of Virginia states that a student must declare a legal residence in order to register. A legal residence can be either a student’s permanent address from home or their current college residence. By making Montgomery County your permanent residence, you have declared your independence from your parents and can no longer be claimed as a dependent on their income tax filings — check with your tax professional. If you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding. And, if you change your registration to Montgomery County, Virginia Code requires you to change your driver’s license and car registration to your present address within 30 days.”

The county registrar of elections said Tuesday that the memo was intended to counteract the absence of cautionary information given to students signed up through the ubiquitous get-out-the-vote registration drives. Generally speaking, however, those interviewed for this article said the warnings are, at worst, farfetched and misleading, or, at best, overstated and not typically supported in reality.

And, in a year in which historic youth voter turnout is anticipated, and the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been propelled by college students’ support, this case in the battleground state of Virginia is “not an isolated incident,” said Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director for the Student Public Interest Research Group’s nonpartisan New Voters Project.

“For a county registrar to issue what really are in our experience unsubstantiated warnings for a particular demographic is alarming,” said Jahagirdar. “It’s upsetting that this is coming up in Virginia. But it’s even more upsetting that the ability of young people to vote is questioned in many other states too.”

She added: “In 25 years of registering young voters around the country, none of the staff has ever heard of a single incident where a student has lost their tax status or their scholarship because of where they’ve registered to vote.”

Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign, which has been registering voters on Virginia Tech’s campus, has called the information propagated by the county “erroneous.” The campaign’s Virginia spokesman, Kevin Griffis, cited an exemption in the U.S. tax code allowing dependents to live away from home while attending school.

And he said that while students should check with their individual health insurers, in the campaign’s calls to 10 top health insurance companies, none indicated that registering to vote at a college address would be grounds for dismissing students from coverage, “and in fact some of them laughed at us.” (In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Lynne High, a spokeswoman for the mammoth United Healthcare, echoed that students covered on their parents’ health insurance plans aren’t affected if they register to vote in another state.)

“We should be trying to engage as many people as possible in the political process, and have them take part in the civic life of their communities. In the case of students at Virginia Tech, their community is Blacksburg. That’s where they live; that’s where they call home. They should be able to vote there,” Griffis said. (The campaign of the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, did not return a call to its Virginia state office Tuesday.)MORE

Comments

[mamomo.livejournal.com]

Where are they getting this from? I registered and voted where I lived during college, and I never had any issues with financial aid, health coverage, or being my parents dependent on taxes. Nor have I heard of any other student voters having this problem. Where you live - and thus, vote - has nothing to do with those other things as far as I can figure. Insurance companies, banks, and the government know if you don't live with your parents during college regardless of where you're registered to vote. I'm so confused by this scare tactic anti-logic.