More Voter Suppression in Ohio

I’m actually a little sympathetic to this one. In the U.S. it’s not normal for people to vote outside the state of their legal residence. I spent a year working in Illinois, while still a legal resident of Michigan. My car was Michigan registered, my driver’s license was from Michigan, and my official home address was in Michigan. It was appropriate for me to vote in Michigan, but not in Illinois.

So I don’t think it’s really inappropriate for a state legislature to say that if a person’s going to vote in their state then they have to be treated as a resident. Otherwise they’re a resident for purposes of voting, but not for other purposes, and that can get messy really quickly.

Given that ultimately the state’s in charge of residency requirements for both voting and tuition, it seems to me it’s the state’s responsibility to match those two sets of requirements, rather than penalizing the school for providing documents that enable the student to demonstrate that they fit one set.

In other words, if they want students who are legally allowed to vote, by the state’s own standards, to pay in-state tuition, then they should pass a law that sets tuition requirements that match voting requirements. (They won’t do that, I suspect, because the state actually pays the school for every in-state student.)

Similar bills have been proposed in New Hampshire and North Carolina. Probably more states as well.

The right wingers get their legislation from the same sources.

And it is pure voter suppression. They don’t much care for democracy.

There is no level below which they will not stoop.

They’ve yet to start throwing phosphorus and chemical bombs toward neighbourhood where they obtain shitty scores.

Then again, There may already be some “strategists” thinking about it.

“There is no level below which they will not stoop.”

Oh, please! They wouldn’t have to do this if these students would grow up and vote for the Republicans already!

raven “They don’t much care for democracy.”

No, they love democracy so much that they’re willing to step in and save it from the citizenry that’s so insistent on ruining it by voting. That’s patriotism on a level so high, that if there was a bottle of ketchup on it you wouldn’t even be able to reach it.

I would argue that the issue is whether you can maintain your home state residency rather than whether you should be able register to vote in your temporary state of residence.

It is not at all sure, being an out of state student is a temporary state of residency.

There is nothing to say that a student will move back to where they came from when they graduate. Most likely they will go to whatever state they get a job in.

People move a lot in the USA for various reasons and educated professionals move even more.

The problem with not allowing students to vote at school (even if they are non-residents in terms of in-state/out-of-state tuition) is that for many this is the first time they are old enough to vote and most places you have to either register to vote in person or your first time voting must be in person. If their permanent residence is far from your school residence and they didn’t register to vote before coming to school, they may not be able to get back “home” to register and/or vote.

The problem is that students and their tuition are a special category. I know for tax purposes if you spend 183 days/nights in Ohio you are considered a resident, but when it comes to tuition, most places make you establish residency a certain amount of time before starting school to be allowed to qualify for in-state tuition. Every state has it’s own definitions of residency and those definitions also often differ depending on if you are talking about taxes, in-state tuition, voting (which is itself sometimes used to determine residency for things like taxes), etc.

While it may be “reasonable” to not let non-residents vote, students may be residents by most definitions (physical presence, drivers license, voting) and still not get in-state tuition because that residence wasn’t established before they started school. So this isn’t about whether non-residents should be able to vote somewhere, its about whether schools should be able to maintain out-of-state student status for someone once they have become a registered voter there, which is stupid because if you did that, students could all just register to vote wherever they decided to go to school and immediately have in-state tuition and there’d be no such thing as out-of-state tuition anymore, which means tuition would have to be more expensive for everyone in-state or taxpayers would have to give more money to the school.

WTF?

This is about registering to vote in national elections, not local elections, unless I’m misreading the Maddowblog post.

How can it make any difference where someone is allowed to REGISTER to vote, assuming that there is no fraudulent practice involved? Really, why is this even an issue?

Nobody would suggest that U.S. military personnel in a combat zone who are register to vote in their “home state*” are not eligible for combat zone pay and benefits? Well, they wouldn’t have until I gave some scumbag reptilican lurker the idea. Damn, why can’t I just learn to keep my fingers wrapped around my flintlock until they’re cold and dead!

* Several states I’ve lived in do not require students who domicile with their parents during school breaks (out-of-state tuition payers) to re-register autos or get new drivers licenses while they attend a school)