Banning the Vote

By Megan Tady, WireTap. Posted May 23, 2004.

If only students would go out and vote.

Except their vote isn't welcome in Brunswick, Maine. Or in Prairie View, Texas. Or, as a matter of fact, in Utica, New York. All of these college towns -- and many others -- have local statutes that limit students from establishing residency and registering to vote.

Their vote is certainly not welcome in Williamsburg, Virginia, home to the College of William and Mary, where the city council has passed anti-student laws, blocked students from becoming residents, restricted students from registering to vote, and thwarted any effort made by students to change the discriminatory policies by running for office.

Among other things, the city council passed "owner occupancy" agreements on housing, making it increasingly difficult for students to find housing near campus, and evicted some students from their homes mid-semester for violating the archaic "three-to-a-house rule" -- no more than three unrelated people can live together in a house in Williamsburg.

So when three of the five seats on the city council were up for grabs in the spring of 2003, four students -- Serene Alami, Robert Forrest, Seth Saunders, and Luther Lowe, tired of not being able to voice their concerns in their town -- announced their candidacy. A week later, all four students received voter registration denials. The grounds? They didn't qualify as residents of Williamsburg.

Even though students used to be able to register to vote in Williamsburg using their dorm address, the registrar had begun to require students to fill out a tricky two-page questionnaire to determine residency, asking such questions as: Where is your car registered? Are you a dependent on your parent's tax return? What community activities are you involved in? (The questionnaire specified church.)

Using the results of the questionnaire, the Williamsburg registrar determined some students were ineligible to register to vote in Williamsburg, effectively banning them from participating in local politics.

Although the 26th Amendment guarantees students the right to vote and a 1979 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that students can vote where they attend school if they establish residency, it remains unclear what constitutes residency. Local election boards have been able to fill in the gaps, and under the Virginia Constitution, eligible voters must have a physical abode in a town with the intent to live there for an unlimited time.

"Because the law is so ambiguous, it leaves the decisions up to people who aren't legal experts about who has the right to vote," says Serene Alami, one of the four students who attempted to run for city council.

Both Lowe and Alami, with the help of the Virginia ACLU, challenged their denials, first in federal court, and then, when the case was sent back, in the circuit court. The judge overturned Lowe's denial because, although he is originally from Arkansas, he had committed to six years with the Virginia National Guard. Alami's registration denial, however, was upheld, with her in-state status and her attempt to run for a four-year seat on the city council not enough to prove she planned to live in Williamsburg for an "unlimited time."

"Students shouldn't have to join the National Guard to vote. It doesn't make sense for Serene to vote for the school board in Roanoke, where her parents live," Lowe says. "It makes sense for her to vote where the issues affect her most -- where we need crosswalks and get parking tickets. We should be able to vote where we have a direct stake in what's happening."

"Here I am trying to do what a good citizen should do -- voting and running for office to try to change things -- and somebody tells me I can't," Alami says.

Along with appealing her case, which is still pending, Alami put her energy into helping Lowe gain the 125 signatures needed to get him on the city council ballot. Only after she collected some of the signatures was she told by the city council that non-residents cannot collect signatures. The council only deemed 124 signatures "considerable," and Lowe was unable to get his name on the ballot.

"It just further illustrated how ludicrous this was and showed how they are actively working to ensure that students don't have a voice in the community," Lowe said.

Seth Saunders was also denied the right to run for city council in Williamsburg, and Rob Forrest quit school, moved off campus, sold his car, and got a local job in order to qualify for residency and run for a seat. He was not elected.

"It's frustrating to think that people habitually complain about youth being apathetic, but any effort made by youth to change that is shot down," Alami says. "And it's not just happening in Virginia."

Don't Rock the (V)Boat

It's happening all over the country. Despite the fact that students live in their college towns eight months of the year for four to five years and are counted by the U.S. census in their college towns, the practice of intimidating and harassing young voters is spreading to various college towns like a flu virus in a campus dorm -- from claiming voting will affect students' financial aid, to giving them lengthy questionnaires, to asking them to provide driver's licenses.

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