Collegiate Times

While the official breakdown of just how many young voters went to the polls or filled in absentee ballots is roughly three months away, both the Virginia 21 Coalition and the New Voters Project claim success in enlisting voters at Tech and institutions of higher learning around the state. There is no doubt that the groups attracted students, but state registrars, colleges and the vote-drivers themselves have misgivings about how the process of registering students is carried out.

The New Voters Project is part of the state branch of the Public Interest Research Group, founded by Ralph Nader in the 1970s and headquartered in Oregon. The Chicago-based project registered 1,493 students at Tech as well as contacting 30,840 statewide, has come under scrutiny from two local registrars for aggressive registering practices as well as for pushing the envelope as far as turning in a massive amount of registration forms just before the deadline of 5 p.m. on Oct. 11.

Montgomery County Registrar Randy Wertz was shocked to see all of the New Voters Project?s 1,818 registration forms and absentee ballot applications appear in his office fifteen minutes before the close of business on Oct. 11.

?We asked (the New Voters Project) to sit and try to separate them for us?We always spend half the next morning after that getting them set up to send them to the appropriate counties but we did make them stay and kind of put them by locality. All of the registrars had until 7:00 p.m. that Friday to file all of the material. We finished at 4:45 that Friday, but only because we worked until 8:30 on Wednesday and Thursday, and then we only stopped because the state cut us off,? Wertz said.

Virginia Tech campus organizer for the New Voters Project Sasha Cohen and her staff of ten interns, 30-50 volunteers during the week before Oct.11, and between three and 11 New Voters Project staff for that same duration were unable to handle the sheer amount of work.

?We just didn?t have time to go over there. We had planned on getting them in way earlier, but there was no time. The other thing was that they had stickers on them that had information, e-mail and telephone numbers and were databasing those. That was how we contacted people for the get out the vote drive, and we had forgotten to take all of those stickers off so we just had piles of forms that we had to deal with,? Cohen said.

A branch of the New Voters Project found itself in hot water when it attempted to register voters on the campus of Radford University ? initially without the University?s permission. Eventually, the Project would submit 700 registrations to the Montgomery County Registrar?s office.

Radford City Registrar Tracy Howard was eventually given those forms, a number representing roughly 10 percent of the current voter rolls in Radford City. Two hundred of these applications were accepted, while between three and four hundred more of the applicants were sent postcards asking for more detailed information concerning the fact that on-campus Radford addresses are listed as P.O. boxes, not temporarily permanent addresses.

?The problem was (the applicants) just put their dorm name, no address, and Howard needed an address,? Rosen said, who also assisted Howard in his evaluation of the registrations.

There was some tension between Rosen and Howard as to what exactly the purpose of the postcards was to be, however.

?I would call these people and would explain to them what he was sending them. On this form, he wanted to know their legal home address, probably their parents address at that point, and I tried to tell them that they could put their dorm address and thus vote in Radford City, Cohen said. ?Howard thought I was leading them into saying that their dorm address was their legal address?I was trying to explain to them that what they had registered to vote at was their dorm address and that by registering to vote they were claiming that as their legal address.?

Where the New Voters Project is adamant in registering students at their local addresses, the Richmond-based Virginia 21 primarily pushes for students to vote absentee at their original legal address, typically that of their parents.
?One of the things that we have always told our campus chapter is that? unfortunately state law is ambiguous as to where a student should register?We tell students to register where their legal address is ? it is easier and safer where your legal address is, especially traditional students at four-year schools, who are far more likely to have a legal address where their parents live,? said David Solimini, communications director for VA21.

Working closely with Tech?s Student Government Association, VA21 registered 1,000 students online and 1,400 students on paper. They reached about 8,000 students through printable online forms across the state. Where the New Voters Project is an organization that students should vote as blocks on university campuses, VA21, as a lobbying group, advocates for widespread support for legislation through absentee balloting.

While glad that the New Voters Project is getting students to the polls, Solimini sees a direct contradiction in philosophy fundamental to the debate over a state law that imposes no real tests on.

?We are glad that organizations are interested in registering Virginia students, but that everyone needs to be cognizant of Virginia law, that slipping in with a bunch of people who have never been to VA before? and who don?t know the state law you have to be very careful. The last thing you want is a voter who is being disenfranchised because they are registered in two places because people are saying ?fill out this form,?? said Solimini.

But Luther Lowe, a senior government major at William and Mary who founded ?Your Williamburg? in order to get local students registered in the city of Williamsburg to change laws that were overly restrictive of the university community, said that the New Voters Project isn?t quite how VA21 described it.

?Pointing the finger at the New Voters Project is a cop-out. Even though they did (their drives) in an aggressive way, the point is to get people out to vote, and they?ve done that,? Lowe said.

Because registrars can apply numerous standards to whether o or not an application is successful, registrars typically allow in-state residents to alter their addresses while out-of-state students are put through more rigorous screening. What registrars see as the problem with such drives is that students might be altering aspects of their lives they didn?t think could be changed by simply moving their voting address.

?This New Voters Project was from out of state ? They were going out telling students that they could, if you were registered in Pennsylvania, you could vote in Virginia, and students were filling out the form not knowing what it would do to them. If a student has a scholarship related to residence, health insurance, or claimed as a dependent on their parents income tax, they might be subject to changes in all of those things,? Wertz said.

Lowe, who has thoroughly researched voter rolls in Williamsburg and monitors the issue of student voting rights nationally, says that claims such as these are preposterous.

?There has never been a case, to my knowledge, where this has been the result,? Lowe said.