By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: September 7, 2008
The widespread practice of students’ registering to vote at their college address has set off a fracas in Virginia, a battleground state in the presidential election.
Late last month, as a voter-registration drive by supporters of Senator Barack Obama was signing up thousands of students at Virginia Tech, the local registrar of elections issued two releases incorrectly suggesting a range of dire possibilities for students who registered to vote at their college.
The releases warned that such students could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents’ tax returns, a statement the Internal Revenue Service says is incorrect, and could lose scholarships or coverage under their parents’ car and health insurance.
After some inquiries from students and parents, and more pointed questions from civil rights lawyers, the state board of elections said Friday that it was “modifying and clarifying” the state guidelines on which the county registrar had based his releases.
Student-registration controversies have been a recurring problem since 1971, when the 26st Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 from 21, and despite a 1979 ruling by the United States Supreme Court that students have the right to register at their college address.
Virginia is not the only state with murky guidelines. South Carolina’s voter-registration site, for example, says students who want to register to vote at their college address must demonstrate “a present intention to remain in the community.”
“There’s no issue for snowbirds who live in Iowa but fly to Florida for the winter,” said Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director of the Student Public Interest Research Group’s New Voters Project. “One demographic group, like students, shouldn’t have to overcome a special hurdle to vote. We impose all the responsibilities of citizenship on students, and we have to provide them with the privileges of citizenship, too.”
Ms. Jahagirdar said Virginia’s warnings were profoundly misleading. “We have been registering young voters for 25 years,” she said. “We registered 500,000 young voters in 2004, the majority on college campuses, and we’ve never heard of a single one who lost health insurance, scholarship or tax status because of where they registered to vote.”
In Virginia, the county registrar first issued an alarming release on Aug. 25, and two days later a slightly toned-down version using language taken directly from the state Board of Elections’ Web site.
That site says students can determine their legal residence, but advises them to consider certain questions. “Are you claimed as a dependent on your parents’ income tax return?” the site asks. “If you are, then their address is probably your legal residence.”
The site also tells students to check whether their coverage under their parents’ health or automobile insurance, or their scholarship, will be affected by changing their residence.
Civil rights lawyers say these guidelines are problematic and could infringe on students’ rights.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/education/08students.html?ref=politics
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