One of the major sources of student unrest during the Vietnam War was this simple injustice — although 18- to 20-year-olds could be forcibly shipped off to fight in a foreign war, the vast majority could not vote at home. In 1971, Congress and the states, recognizing the unfairness of preventing draftees from registering their disapproval of the war electorally, quickly proposed and ratified the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted the right to vote to all citizens over 18 years of age.
At the amendment's ratification ceremony, President Richard Nixon expressed confidence in "America's new voters," who would bring "a spirit of moral courage" and "high idealism … in the American dream" to the political landscape. This sentiment was widely shared — the amendment was ratified by the required 38 states in fewer than four months, making it the fastest ratification in history.
But it seems that some modern politicians are beginning to have second thoughts about this historic step. According to a March 8 article in the Washington Post, William O'Brien, the new Republican speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, said college students are "foolish," lack "life experience" and "just vote their feelings." O'Brien made these comments at a recent Tea Party gathering in support of tightening New Hampshire's residency laws to prevent college students from voting where they go to school.
Usually electoral changes such as these, which are afoot in many other states, are pursued in the name of fraud prevention, so it is somewhat refreshing that O'Brien explained the real motive behind disenfranchising college students — all too often, they "vot(e) as a liberal." While fraud may be a problem in some instances, voting more than once or lying on voting forms is already a federal felony punishable by five years in prison. And those who are prepared to commit fraud in the current system won't likely be deterred by the new requirements — which are nothing a little more fraud could not circumvent.
Rather, law-abiding citizens will be adversely affected. Some, and especially primary voters in states that hold caucuses, would not even be able to vote in their home states — where they spend little time at all — even if they wanted to. Even students from New Hampshire who go to school away from their hometown may face difficulties voting. What's worse, all students will lose their voice in the direction the community they actually live in takes for the four years they are there because leaders like O'Brien deem them too liberal or too transient.
Tellingly, there are not any moves to disenfranchise temporary workers who move to a state for several years with the intention of leaving later. Such a move would be blatantly unconstitutional. Its very implausibility should illustrate how out of line this analogous, nakedly partisan power play is.
All law-abiding American citizens over 18 years of age have a fundamental constitutional right to vote in the place they live. Arbitrarily denying that right to one subset of the electorate on a flimsy pretext — they only live there nine months of the year, so they do not know the issues well enough — is reprehensible. Elected officials should be in the business of encouraging citizens' participation in their democracy, not suppressing it.
Editorials are written by The Herald's editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
