WHERE do you live? For many students, it’s a complicated question. In an election season, it’s a politically important question.
In this election season and this state, it’s especially important, because conventional wisdom has it that Virginia might throw its electoral votes behind the Democratic candidate for the first time in years — and that that candidate is very popular among college students. According to the Gallup polls, Sen. Barack Obama, D.-Ill., has a huge, consistent lead among 18- to 29-year-old registered voters.
When word spread that the official in charge of registering voters in Blacksburg had issued a statement raising the possibility that registering to vote there instead of at one’s family home might affect a student’s scholarships, tax status and health insurance, it was natural for students there and elsewhere to feel outraged. I know I did. Citizens have a right to vote whether they are students or not. And such a warning, especially given that the student vote in Virginia may be a factor in the presidential election, looks like voter intimidation.
But surely the correct way to decide whether a student should vote where he grew up or where he attends college is not to ask where his vote will be most influential in the presidential election. The Electoral College is not a game to be played strategically. Doing so gives students (and others with residences in multiple states) an unfair advantage: Students who come from non-swing states but attend school in swing states can vote at school, while students from swing states attending school in solidly red or blue states can vote from their “permanent” addresses.
One response to the problem is to insist that students vote only from their “permanent” homes. This is in line with the traditional legal idea that one’s domicile changes only when one establishes a residence and intends to remain there, or at least in that jurisdiction, permanently. But it seems ludicrous in the case of students who have no permanent home — students who intend to live, after graduating, neither where they used to live nor where they attend school. And even in the cases it seems to suit best — students who return to their native states during vacations and plan to return to those states full-time when they finish their degrees — it is not compelling.
Among the reasons for having elections is that, since government exists to serve individuals by protecting their rights, the individuals who live under a government are entitled to supervise it; voting is one form of supervision. Another reason is that participating in the political life of one’s community is part of a flourishing human life.
Consider a University student who was born and raised in Philadelphia, spends his summers there, and plans to seek a job there upon finishing his degree. There are good reasons for him to continue to vote in Philadelphia even when he is in Charlottesville. If he followed politics as a teenager, he’s likely to know Philadelphia politics better than Charlottesville politics. He may have a clear, considered evaluation of the performance of Philadelphia’s mayor but no idea whether Charlottesville even has a mayor. He’s likely to care about how Philadelphia develops in the long run because he is deeply rooted in that city and will spend many years there.
But there are also good reasons for him to vote in Charlottesville (and to inform himself so as to do so competently). He’s here about three-quarters of the year, and, while here, he’s subject to state and local laws as enforced by local police and local courts. As a student, he may have distinctive interests in how certain laws are written, applied and enforced. For example, policies related to alcohol, parking, noise and the expansion of the university’s facilities often affect students and others differently.
When it comes to state and local elections, students should be allowed to vote everywhere they live. Citizens should not have to choose between having a say in the government of the place they call home and having a say in the laws under which they live most of the year.
Such dual voting in presidential and congressional elections, however, would obviously be unfair. The prevailing way of dealing with the problem empowers students to pick their voting places strategically, which is also unfair. But dual voting would eliminate the strongest grounds to object to either requiring students to cast their presidential votes from home (if they have one) or requiring them to do so from school, and either rule would at least reduce strategic voting.
Unless dual voting is established, however, we must accept the risk of strategic voting. School is where students live most of the year. They have the right to vote there.
Alexander R. Cohen’s column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.cohen@cavalierdaily.com.
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