Sunday, February 15, 2009
Bill aims to clarify student voter rule
After a mix-up last fall, Radford's voter registrar helped write the bill on residency requirements.
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All Tracy Howard wants is a little clarity.
And he may get it -- from the General Assembly, of all places.
Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Botetourt County, is sponsoring a bill to clear up where college students can vote. It wasn't the only bill aimed at that question this session, but it was the only one passed unanimously by the Senate. He expects it to pass in the House, too.
"It may get modified a little bit, I don't know," Smith said. "But I think there's a real good chance it could go through."
Howard, Radford's voter registrar, was pilloried last fall by the RU Fair Voter Registration Alliance, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Brennan Center for Justice for his interpretation of Virginia's voter registration laws.
When anyone registered to vote using a Radford University residence hall as their address, Howard sent them a notice called a pending denial, telling them they needed a permanent address to register.
"All I ask them is, 'Where is your real home?' " Howard said last fall.
The ACLU and others thought that requirement was breaking federal law, violating the Constitution, defying federal court decisions and denying students' rights because students are free to call their school their home.
Howard responded that Virginia law requires a person to have a "place of abode" and a "domicile" where they register. A "place of abode" can be wherever you lay your head. A "domicile" is where you live -- and plan to stay for an indefinite length of time. At least, that's how Howard understands it.
For a while last fall, state board of elections officials seemed to agree with him. Then they seemed to disagree. Then they seemed to not be sure, though they sort of backed Howard's position -- in a backhanded way.
"The state board doesn't necessarily agree with what I've done, but they do agree that it was defensible under law and the actions were constitutional," Howard said in October.
"It's murky," Susan Lee, the board's manager of election uniformity, said then. "It's murky."
Howard and the groups arrayed against him all want the murkiness cleared up. Howard virtually wrote the legislation, according to Smith.
"Every other bill came mostly from attorneys with a lot of legalese that clouded things," Smith said. "This is about as few words as you could make the bill. I think that's what most people liked about it. It was to the point and perfectly clear."
Smith said his bill has something else going for it.
"This bill really comes the closest to conforming with federal law," he said. If it doesn't pass as a law, it may pass as a court case, Smith said.
Other bills working their way through the system say that if a person says he lives at a certain place, the presumption should be that he lives there -- which partly addresses the student issue. But those other bills give the board of elections the power to define "domicile," which could put registrars back in the same spot they were in last fall.
"We need the General Assembly to state it," Howard said. "We don't need the state board to state it."
Howard plans to testify at the House Privileges and Elections Committee in support of Smith's legislation. But the committee's next scheduled meeting is Tuesday. There's a special election in Radford that day, which means Howard must be in Radford that day. His wife is the only candidate on the ballot for Radford's circuit court clerk.
