Fox News Attacks Student Voter Registration Effort

Campus Crackdown: Fox News Attacks Student Voter Registration Effort

The 2004 election is expected to see a record number of people registering to vote. But when some feminist groups at the University of Arizona kicked off a campus voter registration campaign, Fox News charged that they were aiding out-of-state students in committing felony voter fraud.

As the November election draws nearer, get out the vote campaigns are intensifying across the country. Many analysts predict that an unprecedented number of people will register to vote. But here in Arizona, a group of students at the university charge that they are being harassed for encouraging students to register. Late last month, students in the Women's Studies honorary society, in conjunction with the Feminist Majority Foundation, gathered on the lawn of the University of Arizona registering voters. They called the drive "Suffrage 2004." They were engaging in an activity that is common on many campuses nationwide. In recent weeks on the Arizona campus, the college Democrats, Republicans and student government had run similar drives. But this one was different. As the students gathered on the lawn doing voter registration, the local Fox News affiliate pulled up to the site and with cameras rolling accused the students of engaging in felony voter fraud. The Fox reporters charged that Arizona law prohibits students from out of state from registering to vote in Arizona. For their part, the students say they had consulted with the local registrar on voter law before they picked up the registration forms and insisted that state law requires only that someone live in the state for 29 days before the election.

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/27/1433241

Fox Hunting Student Voters
By Katha Pollitt, The Nation. Posted September 27, 2004.

Misguided youth or hardened criminals? A Fox affiliate in Arizona covered out-of-state student registration as a criminal act despite its complete legality.

When an urgent e-mail from UA professor Laura Briggs about the Fox broadcast flashed across my screen a few days later, I assumed that such an egregious example of voter intimidation by proxy – with GOP TV standing in for, well, the GOP – would be all over the media by the time my next column deadline rolled around, so I passed on it. Silly me. As I write three weeks later, almost nothing has appeared outside the local press. The silence persisted even after the Feminist Majority – which had spearheaded the students' drive as part of its Get Out Her Vote campaign – held a press conference to publicize the incident. In those three weeks, how many stories have you read bemoaning the apathy of youth, and in particular the fecklessness of young women too "busy" shoe shopping and barhopping to focus on the election

Juliana Zuccaro and Kelly Kraus thought they were exercising their civic rights and responsibilities on Aug. 31 when, as officers of the Network of Feminist Student Activists at the University of Arizona in Tucson, they helped set up a voter-registration drive on the UA mall. Imagine their astonishment when the local Fox affiliate news team showed up and lit into the young women. "The reporter asked if we knew that we were potentially signing students up to commit felonies," Juliana told me – by registering out-of-state students to vote in Arizona. When Kelly then asserted that Arizona law requires only that those registering be resident in the state twenty-nine days before the election, Natalie Tejeda, the Fox reporter, insisted it was illegal to register students. On the news that night, student voter registration was the crime du jour:
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http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19988/

Faux News, they report, you comply.


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a very intelligent young woman, totally committed to her cause. It was a pleasure to hear her speak.

16-121.01. Requirements for proper registration

A. A person is presumed to be properly registered to vote on completion of a registration form as prescribed by section 16-152 that contains at least the name, the residence address or the location, the date of birth and the signature or other statement of the registrant as prescribed by section 16-152, subsection A, paragraph 20 and a checkmark or other appropriate indicator that the person answered "yes" to the question regarding citizenship. The completed registration form must also contain the person's Arizona driver license number, the nonoperating identification license number issued pursuant to section 28-3165, the last four digits of the person's social security number or the person's affirmation that if an Arizona driver license number, nonoperating identification license number or the last four digits of the person's social security number is not provided, the person does not possess a valid Arizona driver or nonoperating identification license or a social security number and the person is hereby requesting that a unique identifying number be assigned by the secretary of state pursuant to section 16-152, subsection A, paragraph 12, subdivision (c).

B. The presumption in subsection A of this section may be rebutted only by clear and convincing evidence of any of the following:

1. That the registrant is not the person whose name appears on the register.

2. That the registrant has not resided in this state for twenty-nine days next preceding the election or other event for which the registrant's status as properly registered is in question.

3. That the registrant is not properly registered at an address permitted by section 16-121.

4. That the registrant is not a qualified registrant under section 16-101.

that address on drivers license must match residence thereby keeping college students from voting.