Collegiate Times

This election has seen the largest increase of registered voters in Blacksburg. Whether that statistic because of the push by campaigners to register students or the assumed importance of this election on the country, the boost of voters is more intense than many expected.

The net increase of voters over the past three months in Montgomery County alone has been 4,349, most of whom are Virginia Tech students. The local registrar has had his hands full with the large influx of paperwork coming from the town's absentee applications.

"In this year, it's gone off the scale," said Montgomery County Registrar Randy Wertz. "There's no way in the world anybody could have predicted we'd have this number of people registering this year based on historical data."

The large turnout has not been the only part of new voter registration that has been problematic for the registrar's office. The office has faced problems with people, students or otherwise, not correctly filling out their applications.

"Whenever the campaigns were on campus, and they started turning in their applications to us, there was some questions with some of the applications," Wertz said.

Among other problems, Wertz explained that many applications from out-of-state students didn't state at the top of the form that those students weren't Virginia residents.  

The failure to become unregistered from a previous location is classified as a misdemeanor. Although Wertz didn't express interest in catching students who have registered in two areas, he stated that these students might have been completely unaware of the issue.

"We're not an investigative agency, so we won't go out looking for these, but there are issues that campaigns on campus weren't completely truthful with students," Wertz said. "They'd tell them they could register in two places, but you can't."

The fault doesn't lie entirely with the campaigns on campus. Some people looking to register at their colleges, at Tech and other schools, failed to educate themselves on the laws about registration for their state.

"The problem in Virginia is that the legislation on voter registration is very vague," said College Republicans at Virgina Tech Political Director Kate Maxwell, a junior political science major. "It's not that people are trying to be dishonest, it's just that they don't know how to interpret the legislation."