quote:

ORIGINAL: Arturas
Hmmm....this is a bit like that term "many" that MSNBC pundits like to use, as in "many say Obama's policies are working for the economy..."

Could you be more specific as to how Al Gore hiring lawyers kept your right to vote. In other words, specifically how was your right to vote being suppressed? Thanks.

quote:

ORIGINAL: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1849906,00.html
Most of the trouble comes from nailing down where college students should be counted as residents if they attend school in one state but go home to another during the holidays. The Supreme Court's position is clear: a 1979 ruling found that all students have the right to vote where they attend college. But local officials often make students travel a rocky road. In recent months, registrars in counties including Montgomery, Va. (home to Virginia Tech), Greenville, S.C. (Furman University), and most recently El 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 New Era Colorado.

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 and could not vote there. "If you're a homeless person, you're allowed to write down the landmarks that you live around," says Zach Pilchen, president of College Democrats at William and Mary, pointing to a space on Virginia's form reserved for that purpose. "But you can't register from a dormitory." Win Sowder, who took over as Williamsburg's registrar in 2007, says her office no longer asks about domicile or restricts student voting.

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 a 2005 Indiana law — upheld last April in a Supreme Court decision that has rankled voter advocates more than any other case since Bush v. Gore — Meentz was refused a ballot because she did not have an in-state ID. And without so much as an explanation of her options, like a provisional or absentee ballot, poll workers sent her home. "That would have been the first time that I would have voted," says Meentz. "I'm still upset about it."

Strict ID laws passed since 2004 — including one that prompted the U.S. Student Association and the ACLU to sue top officials in Michigan on Sept. 18; one the Department of Justice has challenged in Georgia; and similar statutes in Arizona and Florida — fall harder on students than on most voters because so many study out of state. A Rock the Vote poll in February found that 19% of people ages 18-30 don't have a government ID that reflects their current address. And while some states like Ohio will accept alternative ID in the form of a utility bill, producing one can be a tall order for students, who tend to live in dorms and whose utility costs are folded into board fees.