Voting Rights and Wrongs
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
For some reason, there’s been a lot in the news about get-out-the-vote campaigns on college campuses lately. I wonder why?
This morning, what caught my eye was Warning for College Student Voters at Inside HigherEd. Montgomery County, the place Virginia Tech calls home, issued a press release intended to educate college students on the possible complications of registering to vote in their college town rather than their hometown. According to the release, voter registration can affect insurance coverage (if held through parents who live in one’s hometown), scholarship eligibility, and one’s dependent status on taxes.
Critics, however, say the press release was unreasonably grim, and that based on their survey of insurance companies and other sources, no one has ever lost a scholarship, insurance or not been able to be claimed as a dependent on a parent’s taxes because of registering to vote at college. Montgomery County officials say they were just trying to be thorough. A slightly less dramatically worded release was issued two days later.
Meanwhile, get-out-the-vote efforts continue to happen on other campuses. Springfield College, in Springfield MA, is taking a different tack, encouraging students to register when they move in, giving them Rock the Vote t-shirts, and hosting a series of voter education forums.
Campus Compact, an organization promoting civic involvement and volunteership among college students, has created iVote, with lots of great tools for those wishing to get students involved: a voter registration tool and the campus vote map, where students can find others at their school who share their views. Paul Loeb, ACUHO-I conference speaker and author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While and Soul of a Citizen (both popular among ACUHO-I members according to our bookstore sales) is working with Campus Compact, helping to raise funds for their work.