Originally Posted By skinnerbox <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/opinion/keeping-college-students-from-the-polls.html?_r=2&hp" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12...?_r=2&hp</a> <> Keeping Students From the Polls Published: December 26, 2011 Next fall, thousands of students on college campuses will attempt to register to vote and be turned away. Sorry, they will hear, you have an out-of-state driver’s license. Sorry, your college ID is not valid here. Sorry, we found out that you paid out-of-state tuition, so even though you do have a state driver’s license, you still can’t vote. Political leaders should be encouraging young adults to participate in civic life, but many Republican state lawmakers are doing everything they can instead to prevent students from voting in the 2012 presidential election. Some have openly acknowledged doing so because students tend to be liberal. Seven states have already passed strict laws requiring a government-issued ID (like a driver’s license or a passport) to vote, which many students don’t have, and 27 others are considering such measures. Many of those laws have been interpreted as prohibiting out-of-state driver’s licenses from being used for voting. It’s all part of a widespread Republican effort to restrict the voting rights of demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor and the young, who are more likely to support President Obama, are disproportionately represented in the 21 million people without government IDs. On Friday, the Justice Department, finally taking action against these abuses, blocked the new voter ID law in South Carolina. Republicans usually don’t want to acknowledge that their purpose is to turn away voters, especially when race is involved, so they invented an explanation, claiming that stricter ID laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud. In fact, there is almost no voter fraud in America to prevent. William O’Brien, the speaker of the New Hampshire State House, told a Tea Party group earlier this year that students are “foolish” and tend to “vote their feelings” because they lack life experience. “Voting as a liberal,” he said, “that’s what kids do.” And that’s why, he said, he supported measures to prohibit students from voting from their college addresses and to end same-day registration. New Hampshire Republicans even tried to pass a bill that would have kept students who previously lived elsewhere from voting in the state; fortunately, the measure failed, as did the others Mr. O’Brien favored. Many students have taken advantage of Election Day registration laws, which is one reason Maine Republicans passed a law eliminating the practice. Voters restored it last month, but Republican lawmakers there are already trying new ways to restrict voting. The secretary of state said he was investigating students who are registered to vote in the state but pay out-of-state tuition. Wisconsin once made it easy for students to vote, making it one of the leading states in turnout of younger voters in 2004 and 2008. When Republicans swept into power there last year, they undid all of that, imposing requirements that invalidated the use of virtually all college ID cards in voter registration. Colleges are scrambling to change their cards to add signatures and expiration dates, but it’s not clear whether the state will let them. Imposing these restrictions to win an election will embitter a generation of students in its first encounter with the machinery of democracy. <> Excellent editorial. The Justice Dept needs to investigate these new laws beyond SC before next year's election.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 I'm just wondering what would make a college student more upset these days, telling them their ID is not valid for voting or that they can't buy beer.
Originally Posted By dagobert It's the same over here, but it has nothing to do with our drivers licence. We can only vote in the village where we are registered. But everyone can request a special document which allows to vote whereever we want to.
Originally Posted By Autopia Deb College students absolutely should have the right to vote in national elections, but as someone who lives in an unincorporated area near a large university I can tell you having local issues decided by a transient population vexing.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip They could always vote absentee at their permanent home, which is a better solution anyway. I agree with Autopia Deb... there are small towns with colleges where the student population is equal to or greater than the town's permanent population. I really don't want local issues decided by people with no "skin in the game".
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I understand that concern. The trouble is that as it now stands, tens of thousands of students will be able to vote in neither place.
Originally Posted By barboy ///Sorry, your college ID is not valid here./// And you have a problem with that?
Originally Posted By skinnerbox I have problems with the whole voter suppression crap, including this: <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/12/26/395287/93-year-old-tennessee-woman-who-cleaned-state-capitol-for-30-years-denied-voter-id/" target="_blank">http://thinkprogress.org/justi...oter-id/</a> <> 93-Year-Old Tennessee Woman Who Cleaned State Capitol For 30 Years Denied Voter ID By Marie Diamond on Dec 26, 2011 at 3:20 pm A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations. Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she couldn’t produce a birth certificate: Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918, has never had a birth certificate. But when she told that to a drivers’ license clerk, he suggested she might be an illegal immigrant. Thelma Mitchell told WSMV-TV that she went to a state drivers’ license center last week after being told that her old state ID from her cleaning job would not meet new regulations for voter identification. A spokesman for the House Republican Caucus insisted that Mitchell was given bad information and should’ve been allowed to vote, even with an expired state ID. But even if that’s the case, her ordeal illustrates the inevitable disenfranchisements that result when confusing voting laws enable state officials to apply the law inconsistently. The incident is the just latest in a series of reports of senior citizens being denied their constitutional right to vote under restrictive new voter ID laws pushed by Republican governors and legislatures. These laws are a transparent attempt to target Democrat constituencies who are less likely to have photo ID’s, and disproportionately affect seniors, college students, the poor and minorities. As ThinkProgress reported, one 96-year-old Tennessee woman was denied a voter ID because she didn’t have her marriage license. Another senior citizen in Tennessee, 91-year-old Virginia Lasater, couldn’t get the ID she needed to vote because she wasn’t able to stand in a long line at the DMV. A Tennessee agency even told a 86-year-old World War II veteran that he had to pay an unconstitutional poll tax if he wanted to obtain an ID. <> This is no better than Jim Crow. It's a blatant attempt on the part of Republican-controlled state governments to restrict the voting access of those who would most likely vote against Republicans. The GOP hates democracy, and here's the proof.
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones The New York Times will start embracing voter ID laws if they think young people look like they will seriously vote for Ron Paul.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>William O’Brien, the speaker of the New Hampshire State House, told a Tea Party group earlier this year that students are “foolish” and tend to “vote their feelings” because they lack life experience.<< LOL, oh sweet irony. I'm glad the Tea Party is filled with people who don't "vote their feelings." Bro-ther.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan They vote only with their feelings. Or so I've heard, from unemotional people wearing three-pointed hats with tea bags hanging off them. (eye roll)
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones "Are young people really that stupid that they'd vote for Ron Paul?" They'd have to be as stupid as active duty military, from whom Paul receives more donations than the rest of the Republican candidates combined.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<"Are young people really that stupid that they'd vote for Ron Paul?" They'd have to be as stupid as active duty military, from whom Paul receives more donations than the rest of the Republican candidates combined.>> I hope you are not slamming active duty military because they certainly don't deserve it. Of course they would support Paul... he doesn't believe in pre-emptive war, nation building, or all the other BS they are asked to do. Don't know that I do either.
Originally Posted By SpokkerJones I think I've convinced myself to vote for Ron Paul. I really regret voting for Obama after his extension of the Patriot Act, supporting SOPA and the whole controversy with American citizens being indefinitely detained if suspected of being an evil doer. I don't agree with Paul on the fed or abortions or any of that stupid nonsense, but I want the troops home and I want him to fight to end the war on drugs and the Patriot Act. That's the most important thing to me.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>I think I've convinced myself to vote for Ron Paul.<< Can I talk you out of it? >>FACT CHECK: Ron Paul Personally Defended Racist Newsletters<< <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/12/27/395391/fact-check-ron-paul-personally-defended-racist-newsletters/" target="_blank">http://thinkprogress.org/polit...letters/</a> >>Here's the Real Story Behind Ron Paul's Racist Newsletters<< <a href="http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-12-20/politics/30537102_1_newsletters-paul-campaign-conspiracy-theories" target="_blank">http://articles.businessinside...theories</a> Just vote for Obama and get it over with. YOU .... HAVE .... NO .... CHOICE. The first step is denial, the second is anger ....
Originally Posted By Labuda This crystallizes why I think ANYONE who supports Ron Paul is a fool: “I am strongly pro-life. I think one of the most disastrous rulings of this century was Roe versus Wade. I do believe in the slippery slope theory. I believe that if people are careless and casual about life at the beginning of life, we will be careless and casual about life at the end. Abortion leads to euthanasia. I believe that.” - 27 Oct 99 Anyone who is pro-life is anti-woman. And anyone who thinks we should not allow terminally ill people to get out of their misery a bit earlier is not someone I'm a fan of either. My body is MY business, not Ron Paul's. I guess I can't just stifle my morals just because it's convenient in order to support my candidate. I don't have to dig deep at all in Paul's stances to find something that I find anathema enough to drive me FAR away. Oh. But I just looked him up on Wiki, and gotta say that him being pro-death penalty doesn't surprise me one bit and just further raises my ire. We're SUPPOSED to be leader of the free world (when's the last time we heard THAT phrase bandied about in support of the US?), not people who think that two wrongs make a right. That's for barbaric countries.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Abortion leads to euthanasia. I believe that.<< I know several people who are quite anti-abortion, and yet are very much in favor of allowing people to have doctor-assisted suicide rather than linger on for years with no quality of life, suffering. "We're more humane in how we end the lives of dogs than people," they'll often say.
