[EL] Student Voting

Sun Apr 19 14:16:43 PDT 2020

Jeff, what difference would that make one way or another? What does your question have to do with the interesting and thoughtful point Brad was making?
On Sunday, April 19, 2020 Jeff Hauser <jeffhauser at gmail.com> wrote:
Again, I'm sure Bradley Smith has gone to great lengths in his public service to ensure that corporate America never locates itself in such a way to minimize (or at times wholly avoid and/or evade) taxation.
On Sun, Apr 19, 2020 at 4:43 PM Smith, Bradley <BSmith at law.capital.edu> wrote:

This is an issue of growing concern in small towns across the country, too, I've recently discovered, for reasons beyond picking "battleground" states in high profile elections. It was brought to my attention by local residents of my small college town, which recently passed a permanent school income tax. The measure passed by 188 votes overall, but by 304 in the precinct that contains the our college. Because this is a small town, virtually none of the students will remain in town after graduation. But it's pointed out that virtually none of these student voters obtain Ohio driver's licenses or license their cars in Ohio, which new residents are required by law to do within 30 days of moving to the state. Ohio is relatively unique in that lots of small towns and cities have income taxes. These are taxes off gross, world-wide income, assessed on residents. The students neither file local returns nor pay the income taxes (which should be levied, for example, even on income earned at their "former" home in the summer, if they are actually village residents). A great many publicly list themselves on social media as residents or citizens of where they went to high school. 
In theory, these other accoutrements of residency could be enforced on students who vote in the village, or, alternatively, their right to vote could be challenged. In practice, officials seem frightened to take such steps, perhaps because they fear being accused of voter suppression, or of lawsuits against their jurisdiction if they seek to enforce residency requirements on either end. Of course, there is no vote suppression, because the students could vote from their old homes. 

Bradley A. Smith

Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault

   Professor of Law

Capital University Law School

303 E. Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43215

614.236.6317

http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx
From: Law-election [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Pildes, Rick [rick.pildes at nyu.edu]
Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2020 11:56 AM
To: Election Law
Subject: [EL] Student Voting

   ** [ This email originated outside of Capital University ] **

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>

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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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