[EL] Fwd: Where can college students vote this November?

[Michael J. Hanmer]

Looks like I sent only to Charles. 

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Michael J. Hanmer" <mhanmer at umd.edu>
> Date: April 19, 2020 at 10:23:23 AM EDT
> To: Charles H Stewart <cstewart at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re:  [EL] Where can college students vote this November?
> 
> 
> Dick Niemi, Tom Jackson, and I have a 2009 ELJ piece that covers the issue of college student voting. Tom is a legal scholar and led the sections involving legal analysis.
> 
> Here are my thoughts, some of which I am not very sure of. I agree with Charles that the legal scholars should weigh in.
> 
> Students who haven’t yet established residence in the college town can’t register in the college town, just as anyone planning a move that hasn’t happened yet can’t register in the new place ahead of arriving at the new place. For unregistered students who have lived in the college town but don’t have an active lease, it would seem they too can’t register in the college town until they start living there.
> 
> I think things get tricky for students who are registered in their college town if they have leases that expire. If they establish a new residence they can register there and get an absentee ballot under the usual rules. If they don’t establish another residence in the college town I am not sure what happens. If they want to vote in their college town by absentee ballot they should be able to get a ballot with the presidential race. I could see local discretion influencing whether they get a full ballot.
> 
> The question on the Census is interesting too. I saw the same guidance Charles noted from citizen groups. The online Census form also had instructions to that effect.
> 
> Best,
> Mike
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
>>> On Apr 18, 2020, at 9:23 PM, Charles H Stewart <cstewart at mit.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>> 
>> This question has come to me, and seems to present an interesting twist that requires an answer from a legal scholar, not a political scientist…
>>  
>> Let us say that in the upcoming fall semester, a university says that their students have to stay “at home” and cannot live on campus.  The student in question lives out of state.  The student in question would otherwise have qualified to vote in the state where they were a student.  Can that student vote absentee in the locality where they are enrolled in college?
>>  
>> This seems to be a major twist on the question of where students are domiciled for the purposes of elections when they are away from home to go to college.
>>  
>> I will note that MIT students received an e-mail from the administration saying that for the purposes of the Census, they will be counted as living at MIT, even though the campus had evacuated. I know that this has little-to-no bearing on the question about domicile for voting, but it is an example of how one legal fiction has ignored campus evacuations.
>>  
>> Thoughts?
>>  
>> Charles
>>  
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>> Charles Stewart III
>> Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science
>> Director, MIT Election Data and Science Lab
>> Co-Director, Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
>>  
>> Department of Political Science
>> The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>> Cambridge, Massachusetts   02139
>> 617-253-3127
>> cstewart at mit.edu
>>  
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