Back then, there was a certain candidate for Watauga County Commissioner who said that he was against allowing ASU students to vote in local elections. Have a look yourself:
So, student voting in local elections was a bad thing then. But now--up in Virginia--student voting is a good thing! It's a righteous thing! From cnn.com:
...All that former candidate for Watauga County Commissioner needs to do now is somehow convince a branch of Liberty University (or maybe even Regent University!) to set up shop right here in Watauga! So those righteous kids will vote for HIM again and again--on the straight party-line ballot!Given the close nature of the presidential race, Jerry Falwell, Jr., chancellor of Liberty University, recently launched an ambitious effort to register all 10,500 eligible student voters at the fundamental Baptist institution in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Falwell kicked off the voter registration drive September 22, urging students -- including those from out-of-state -- to register locally.
"Liberty students have never been permitted to register locally in the past. The recent change in election law is giving Liberty University the chance to make history," Falwell stated in an e-mail addressed to faculty and staff. "Liberty University's 11,000 students and 4,000 faculty and staff could cause Liberty to become known as the university that elected a president!"
...
Falwell's belief that Liberty could impact the outcome of Virginia's election may seem like wishful thinking, but Virginia's 2006 U.S. Senate race was decided by slightly less than 10,000 votes.
"The majority of Liberty students want McCain to win," Woods said. "If you have a few thousand people voting for one candidate, who weren't [initially] voting in Virginia, it could possibly make a difference."
Ashley Barbera, communications director of the College Republicans National Committee, said college students have the potential to significantly impact the outcome of this election.
...
Regardless of whether Liberty voters affect the outcome of this election, Hernandez said the voter registration drive might just be the beginning of Liberty University's political influence.
"It could be a starting point. Maybe it won't change anything this time, but in the future," she said. "If the school keeps up the initiative, even just one little change is probably going to affect the future."
...
3 comments:
Forget the past. Check out the present.
* Nevada. "State authorities on Tuesday raided an organization that registers low-income people to vote"--that would be ACORN--"alleging that its canvassers falsified forms with bogus names, fake addresses or famous personalities," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. "The secretary of state's office launched an investigation after noticing that names did not match addresses and that most members of the Dallas Cowboys appeared to be registering in Nevada to vote in November's general election."
* Ohio. "A national voter-registration group admitted to Cuyahoga County election officials Tuesday that it cannot eliminate fraud from its operation," reports Cleveland's Plain Dealer. "The group blamed inefficiency and lack of resources for problems such as being unable to spot duplicate voter-registration cards or cards that may have been filled out by workers to make quotas."
* Missouri. "Officials . . . are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states," the Associated Press (!) reports. "In April, eight ACORN workers in St. Louis city and county pleaded guilty to federal election fraud for submitting false registration cards for the 2006 election."
* Indiana. "In Lake County, Ind., a nonprofit group Obama once represented as a lawyer, ACORN, filed an estimated 2,500 fraudulent voter registrations in the past two weeks, county election officials say," reports the Chicago Sun-Times.
Montana GOP Tries To Disenfranchise 6,000 Voters, Then Backs Down In Face of Dem. Lawsuit
Last week, the Montana state GOP tried to disenfranchise 6,000 Montana voters in six Democratic-leaning counties based solely on the fact that the voters had filed change of address forms with the U.S. Postal Service within the last 18 months.
Now the Montana GOP has announced that, in the face of a lawsuit filed by the state Democratic Party, they are withdrawing the challenges and would be issuing no more.
We refer you to the excellent and speedy (far too speedy for us to scoop) coverage here and here by our colleagues at The BRAD BLOG.
The GOP voter disenfranchisment effort was widely condemned by many, including Montana's Republican lieutenant governor John Bohlinger. In an editorial in the Montana Standard, Mr. Bohlinger writes, in part:
"[T]he executive director of the Republican Party crossed the line when he attempted to remove 6,000 voters from the rolls in Montana. These voters are law-abiding citizens and are legally registered. Some are veterans. Others are active servicemen, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan or about to be deployed there.
"As a Republican, I was ashamed to hear of this. But as a Marine, I was outraged. Why would the Republican Party, which always claims to care greatly about our troops, do this?
Link: http://www.velvetrevolution.us/electionstrikeforce/2008/10/montana_gop_tries_to_disenfran.html
oh, yeah--the present:
Our colleagues at The BRAD BLOG have recently blogged about a CBS Evening News report on illegal voter purges going on in at least 19 states, including key battleground states. Scores of thousands of voters have been purged from the rolls.
Watch the report for yourself:
As explained by CBS News, these secret voter purges are illegal. A report by the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice explains that under the National Voter Registration Act, it's illegal to conduct systematic voter purges within 90 days of a federal election.
The pertinent part of the law [pdf, 80 Kb] reads as follows:
§ 1973gg-6. Requirements with respect to administration of voter registration
(2) (A) A State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.
Yet despite this law, on the books since the 1990s, many states are conducting these illegal, massive purges of the voter rolls.
From the AP: "Since the last federal election in 2006 ... more than 2 million Democrats [have been added] to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 thousand voters in the same states."
This means that these illegal voter purges disenfranchise registered Democrats at a much higher rate than those voters who are registered as Republicans.
http://www.velvetrevolution.us/electionstrikeforce/2008/10/urgent_call_to_action_contact.html
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