Collegiate Times

Delegate Dave Nutter:

Question from the audience: Delegate Nutter, has this issue of a lack of legislation clarifying the situation caught your attention? Are your colleagues discussing this?

I haven't gotten a single letter on it, let's put it that way. Voter registration tends to go up and down and it tends to follow four-year cycles ... But, no, I haven't had one communication from a constituent.

I don't represent Blacksburg proper but I do have the Corporate Research Center, the town of Radford and some of Floyd county, so from that perspective, as far as the clarification issue - like all these things, some of this gets used for tax purposes. That's part of the equation.

A few years ago, (a non-profit, voter registration group called) Virginia 21 was pushing the process of getting an absentee ballot online a few years back. I think it made perfect sense. But several of the registrars around my area were against it. So, these things move very slowly. I think the complication on the registration issue is about the tax issue. If you're a resident, this is where you get push back from the localities and the other association saying you need to be registering your car. Now, for those of you from Northern Virginia, our personal property tax is a lot lower here than there, so you might want to think about it.

Why should students register to vote?

Just so everybody knows, I was a student at Virginia Tech. Back in the 1970s, when Gerald Ford was running against Jimmy Carter. We always tried to get students to register to vote here. I've been a part of this process for 30 years.

I'm going to disagree with my colleague here (pointing to Brians) and say that your vote does count. In this region we've had some very close elections. The commonwealth attorney of Radford was elected by one vote. Even after the recount: one vote. State senator Madison Reeves, from this area, was elected by nine votes.

I also hope that voting is about being part of a community, too. Over the years here in this region, one of the dynamics we've also seen, from a town perspective, is that we've had, about every five years, a student run for (town) council.

That's always been an uphill battle, especially because council elections had been in May and in May you all are getting ready to finish up your work and get out the door. Now that council elections in Blacksburg have been moved to November, you're going to see more patterns of that.

Anyone who is in elected office knows they don't have an entitlement to the office. With people challenging us and running for office, well, that is part of what democracy is about and if you are in elected office it makes you a stronger official if you have a challenge.

So everybody has the right to have your voice heard. If you think about it from an education perspective, it helps you enter society, to be prepared, have an education, and be a working member of the community. When I talk to civic groups, I say that when we say "We the people," well, that's you, and I think the state registrar ... (is predicting) 80 percent voter turnout. That's incredible. That's a good sign.

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