Word: voter
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...they will focus on putting out fires until after Election Day. Once the hyper-partisanship has ebbed, they will start a more aggressive push - kicked off by a hearing in front of the House Administration Committee on Sept. 25 - for their long-term legislative goals, which include facilitating student-voter registration both on Election Day and far in advance of it through high school civics classes, as well as more consistent guidelines to help registrars do their jobs and ensure that students get to vote. Says Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director of the Student Public Interest Research Group's New Voters...
...Kenyon has now upped its number of voting machines to 10, but other precincts admit they're still basing their Election Day plans on where the voting rolls stood in August, long before student-voter drives even started, let alone achieved record successes. To accommodate the swollen voting rolls, many understaffed offices will have to hire temps or new employees who are less familiar with standard procedures and may be more prone to making mistakes...
...Paso, Colo. (Colorado College), issued warnings that were off-putting if not outright alarming: students who register in their college town could be ineligible to be claimed as dependents on their parents' tax returns and might be in danger of losing tuition scholarships. The problem, according to youth-voter advocates and the IRS, was that these dire warnings were incorrect. After widespread outrage, the registrars backed off. But experts worry that the resulting confusion could sour first timers on voting altogether. "It's creating somewhat of a chilling effect," says Steve Fenberg, executive director of the youth civic action group...
...Legal misunderstandings are one thing, but some registrars seem to make political decisions about whether students get to vote locally. In Virginia, for example, where the law stipulates that voters must establish "domicile" in their precincts to register but never defines that term, youth-voter advocates say it's no accident that registrars' rulings are often strictest in small towns, where students could potentially swing a local election. In 2004, after a voter drive registered 2,000 William and Mary students in Williamsburg - home to fewer than 12,000 residents - the local registrar announced that students no longer had domicile...
...Ironically, since the last presidential election, several states that have passed laws intended to restore public confidence in the election process could end up excluding a lot of first-time student voters. Last May, for example, during Indiana's Democratic primary, Melanie Meentz, now 19, arrived as a freshman at the polling place at St. Mary's College with what seemed like documents aplenty: her approved voter registration card for St. Joseph County, where St. Mary's is located, along with her school photo ID, Social Security card and driver's license from Illinois, where she grew up. But under...