When students move out of state for college, they have to choose whether they wish to stay registered to vote at home or switch to where they will be going to school.
In Arizona, students are able to register with a minimal amount of effort — they must show they consider Arizona their home to be entitled to vote. This is not necessarily the case in other states, and now it’s becoming an issue in New Hampshire.
Republicans running New Hampshire’s House of Representatives are pushing measures that would make it tougher for out-of-state students to register to vote.
Two pieces of legislation unfairly and specifically target college students. The first bill would only allow students to vote in the town where they go to school if their parents have established permanent residency there, while the second would end voter registration on election day, when many college students register.
Only five other states — Minnesota, Maine, Wisconsin, Idaho and Wyoming — have same-day voter registration. We completely understand arguments for eliminating the service and setting an earlier registration deadline, but doing so to curtail voting is entirely off base. New Hampshire students utilize this service and have every right to do so.
“[College students] basically do what I did when I was young and foolish, voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do. They don’t have life experience and they vote their feelings,” said New Hampshire’s Speaker of the House William O’Brien during a Tea Party meeting.
Aside from the obvious problems of painting with such broad strokes, O’Brien and his fellow GOP legislators do not seem to realize that these efforts will drive away the student supporters they already have. Even if a candidate held every value you hold, would you want to vote for them if they tried to take away your right to vote?
Student Democratic and Republican groups at Dartmouth University have pulled together on this issue to protect their right to vote.
Traditionally, undergraduate degrees take four years to complete, which is a full election cycle — one presidential election and one midterm election. Students are citizens and they deserve legislative and congressional representation just like everybody else.
Say a student from North Carolina wasn’t able to register in Arizona because of strict registration laws. Their participation in protesting extreme budget cuts wouldn’t mean anything to the lawmakers, who feel no responsibility to the people who can’t vote for them.
The same serves true for those students in New Hampshire. At such a critical juncture in our nation’s history, everyone deserves a voice in the public sphere.
Many students end up settling down where they went to school. These places are where we make connections — be it through internships, jobs or people — and these connections lead to life after graduation.
Proposing — much less passing — legislation that curtails students’ right to vote is nothing short of absurd.
