Posted on 10/24/2002 2:35:49 PM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
Posted Tuesday, October 22, 2002 | Email a Comment
Student Voter Rights Denied By Clark County Judge
Democrats to Blame for Disenfranchisement of Registered Voters
Arkadelphia, AR In what is perhaps one of the most egregious acts of voter disenfranchisement in Arkansas history, Judge John A. Thomas a Clark County circuit judge today issued a decision to prohibit registered students from voting who attend Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University. The decision comes after a complaint was filed by Floyd Thomas Curry, an Arkadelphia resident and the son of a local Democratic candidate.
"We are absolutely outraged by this decision that will leave hundreds of students without a place to vote and without a voice," said Bryant F. Adams, political director of Generation GOP and a leader in the Ouachita Baptist College Republican organization. "This will not stand - the students and the state will not let this stand."
Students at Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University along with Generation GOP registered over 1,000 new students to vote, the majority of whom were Republican and supported Party candidates. Unofficial polls at Ouachita Baptist University suggest that the student body of over 3,000 students is more than 80% Republican in leaning.
"This injunction against students was a calculated move to keep Republican youth from voting," said R. Stuart Jones, chairman of Generation GOP. "It is extremely important to get young people interested in voting and in the electoral process - denying them their right to vote is not a proper introduction to democracy."
Generation GOP is working with several allied organizations including the College Republicans, Teenage Republicans and Young Republicans to organize a rally against the disenfranchisement of legal voters at Ouachita Baptist University and Henderson State University.
This is what I decided after some thinking.
Not just the state they call home, but even if they consider Arkansas their home state, they have to be registered and vote in their own precinct.
We always voted absentee in the state of our permanent home address which happened to be Arkansas. But, when we were living at Fort Drum (during the Clinton administration) there was a group who tried to keep military folks who were actually registered in New York state (and had their permanent home address there) from voting in local, statewide and federal elections. They actually filed suit. It caused a big controversy and was part of the Clinton administration's attempt to take away the ability to be able to vote on military installations. I remember that it was Democrats who were angry that there were so many people who lived at Fort Drum that actually took an interest in voting. They didn't like that even though the people were doing it legally. That is the whole bottom line to this issue too. The Democrats want to be able to vote and have all of their ancestors vote but don't want to give young Republicans the same chance.
While you're at it, lower the max voting age to 55. The elderly are sucking us dry with their entitlements.
Ridiculous. If I go right now and sign up for a night class at UALR, does my residency automtically revert to my parents' address?
I assume that you live in your own home, separate from your parents. That is your domicile. If you sign up for a night class at UALR, then under the law, your domicile is what it was before you became a student, that is, your current domicile. It will remain there even if you move onto campus temporarily. The point is that your domicile doesn't automatically convert to the UALR campus, and cannot, under the law -- not that it converts back to your parents' address.
Or maybe that they are Baptists what violates the separation of church and state.
If a student IS registered somewhere else in the state of Arkansas, they have until October 29 to obtain an absentee ballot, so those students have an option and should exercise it.
Where the problem is is with those students who changed their registration from their previous location and have been purged from the rolls in the previous residence AND with those students who never registered in a previous location. These students were apparently registered only in Clark County and some had even voted previously there and some are even from that county. As I understand it, this decision was made to purge their names from the rolls AFTER the deadline to register anywhere else, assuming they have what could be considered a legal residence outside the county, which means that unless the decision is overturned they will not be allowed to vote even though they were originally registered in plenty of time.
Maybe you weren't asking the right people. But the fact is, Indiana law is different than Arkansas law in this respect - Indiana only requires that you reside in the precinct for at least 30 days, under IC §3-7-13-1(3), and has no exclusion for students or other temporary residents.
On the other hand, anyone presently in jail or otherwise lawfully detained, or anyone who's been convicted of and imprisoned for a crime regardless of whether or not it was a felony, is not eligible to register and vote under §3-7-13-4, unlike in some other states.
Would there be a big uproar if there was a prison voter registration drive that an Indiana judge ruled illegal? I doubt it. The law is the law, and if the legislators don't like it, they should just introduce a bill to change it.
I agree that there may be some special cases where a student legitimately can claim his domicile at the college address, and those should be addressed in court. I also agree that the students should be allowed to re-register at their proper domicile despite the deadlines.
But the bottom line is that someone really fouled up by registering them without consulting the law first.
I spent more time in IN than MD and I paid for my own tuition so why wouldn't I want to register there? I really didn't care what happened in MD as much as I did in IN.
I do agree that if that was the law in AR then someone goofed, however I still disagree with it.
Clinton's curse.
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