Guest Post: Don’t Encourage Them

The following is a guest post from my friend, halrivers.

Don’t Encourage Them: The Threat of the College Vote
By U. Samuels Apoplect

While activist courts have sometimes supported unfettered access to the franchise by college students, we are under no obligation to encourage them to register to vote; indeed, we should not. They are often temporary residents of the communities where they matriculate, and they are likely more interested in parties and FaceBook pop stars than in the traditions of our republic. If the drudgery of filing an absentee ballot discourages them, it’s their problem, not ours. Voter suppression for students and others too distracted to merit the franchise is time-honored and legitimate.

The problem arises when the usual suspects, viz. the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice, intervene in the natural course of student apathy to force voting officials to strictly comply with the Supreme Court decision affirming the right of all students to register in their school community if they consider it to be their residence (Symm v. United States, 1979). This ruling forbids such officials from demanding students show any item other than a college ID (i.e., driver’s license, apartment lease, utility bill) or to answer special questionnaires to demonstrate residency, on the grounds that such requirements impose an undue burden.

We all know these students still live with their parents and should not be given unlimited license to dictate laws protecting tax-paying citizens from student excesses in the communities where they temporarily sojourn. Fortunately, many college communities still require verification of permanent residency. Some, Delaware, for example, have even threatened students with loss of financial aid for registering to vote in the state. While Delaware was forced to withdraw that threat, it has quietly imposed a requirement for documentation in addition to student IDs. Fortunately, the deliberative mechanics of redress operate too slowly to permit much damage before the spaced-out college population, temporarily aroused to the novelty of voting by an approaching election, accomplishes the manifold legal and organizational efforts required to force voting officials to comply with the Supreme Court before the election has come and safely gone.

There is no constitutional right to vote. The constitution only provides that voting rules must not be discriminatory in intent, regardless of their effects. For example, poll taxes and state laws denying the right to vote to former felons have been struck down where there was a legislative record of intent to restrict the black vote. Where there is no such record, these laws have been upheld, regardless of their disproportionate effects on African Americans. And recently, a lawsuit claiming that a new photo ID law in Georgia would put an unfair burden on the elderly and the poor was dismissed by Federal Judge Harold Murphy. Subsequently, this year’s Georgia Primary ran smoothly, if plagued by delays, but poll workers reported no complaints about the Voter ID.

So, local election officials, hold the line. Don’t allow some pied piper to lead the clueless college crowd into the voting booth to vote for some ill-considered change.