[EL] Student Voting

Sun Apr 19 09:11:38 PDT 2020

If one were to address systemic "choice of jurisdiction" issues in America,
I would think the corporate law race to the bottom (think: Delaware and
some newish competitiors (e.g., NV)) would be rather higher on the list
than university student voting.

Indeed, choosing between one of 2 facially plausible options for primary
jurisdiction is vastly less tortured than the justifications of allowing
corporations to choose a state that is rarely among the 25-48 most
significant to their operations or sales.

On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 11:57 AM Pildes, Rick <rick.pildes at nyu.edu> wrote:

> More broadly on the subject of student voting, students are the largest
> group of voters who often have the choice of voting in one of two states
> (the other are military voters, but that’s a much smaller group).  Whenever
> I poll my law students in election years, most of them tell me they will
> vote in whichever of their two options is the closest to being a swing
> state in the presidential election, to the extent they can legally choose
> either.
>
>
>
> I’ve often thought from a systemic perspective this is an area in which
> we’d  be better off with a uniform national policy, at least for federal
> elections.   That won’t happen, politically, but every election cycle in
> many states we face political struggle, litigation, confusion about this
> issue, as well as the fact that a number of states change their laws on
> this from one election to another.
>
>
>
> Would Congress have the power to adopt legislation on this for national
> elections?  This is a borderline issue in constitutional law.  States have
> the power to determine the qualifications needed to be able to vote, even
> for national elections.  So states would have the power to determine
> whether they only permit residents (usually defined as presence and intent
> to remain) to vote or also permit those who are merely domiciled there to
> vote.  But once states chose residency, for example, Congress might have
> some room to regulate what’s required to prove bona fide residency.
>
>
>
> But this is a theoretical issue, because Congress is highly unlikely to
> have enough consensus on the right policy to legislate on this at all.
>
>
>
> *From:* Law-election [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu]
> *On Behalf Of *Trevor Potter
> *Sent:* Sunday, April 19, 2020 10:57 AM
> *To:* Michael J. Hanmer <mhanmer at umd.edu>; Election Law <
> law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
> *Subject:* Re: [EL] Fwd: Where can college students vote this November?
>
>
>
> “ residence” and “permanent domicile” are of course a matter of state law
> for these purposes. However, my understanding is that many states
> incorporate the concept of intent— the voter is currently living elsewhere
> but had established residency in the state and intends to return , even if
> they have no current abode in the state. This applies to members of the
> military, for instance.
>
> Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> on
> behalf of Michael J. Hanmer <mhanmer at umd.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2020 10:46 AM
> To: Election Law
> Subject: [EL] Fwd: Where can college students vote this November?
>
> 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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