|
|
Post by aj2hall on Mar 29, 2023 11:23:16 GMT
College students turned out in record numbers in the last 3 elections. The majority voted Democratic. The Republican solution - voter suppression. Instead of altering their platform to appeal to younger voters, reaching out to them or any other strategy, they’re just trying to prevent them from voting. Infuriating. www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/us/politics/republicans-young-voters-college.html |
|
casii
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,461 
|
Post by casii on Mar 29, 2023 12:42:28 GMT
Of course, rather than serving a growing voting group, they'll do whatever they can to retain power. I tend to think genz will find ways to vote because they're a different breed of empathetic humans.
|
|
scrappinmama
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,865
Jun 26, 2014 12:54:09 GMT
|
Post by scrappinmama on Mar 29, 2023 14:34:16 GMT
Yesterday my 23 year old son asked what it would take to stop school shootings. I said as the amount of younger people vote, and the amount of older people who tend to be conservative die off, that may turn the tides and make gun control happen. I have no doubt in my mind that Republicans will do everything in their power to stop young and minority voters from exercising their right.
|
|
|
|
Post by revirdsuba99 on Mar 29, 2023 16:25:02 GMT
The Parkland/March For Our Lives kids are still out there talking, marching, supporting and voting!!
Rep Maxwell Frost, youngest Rep ever, is doing his job in the House!!
|
|
|
|
Post by dewryce on Mar 29, 2023 16:29:35 GMT
College students turned out in record numbers in the last 3 elections. The majority voted Democratic. The Republican solution - voter suppression. Instead of altering their platform to appeal to younger voters, reaching out to them or any other strategy, they’re just trying to prevent them from voting. Infuriating. www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/us/politics/republicans-young-voters-college.htmlI don’t have access. Would you mind stating how they are trying to prevent them from voting so I can Google it? |
|
RosieKat
Drama Llama
PeaJect #12
Posts: 5,380
|
Post by RosieKat on Mar 29, 2023 16:36:26 GMT
The Parkland/March For Our Lives kids are still out there talking, marching, supporting and voting!! And the parents! Stand With Parkland has been able to accomplish a lot of things, actually. Part of their approach is that gun control is just one portion of things, there are several other components to minimizing school shootings. They've been able to make some good strides, believe it or not. |
|
|
|
Post by flanz on Mar 29, 2023 16:48:06 GMT
Of course they are. ^%$&^%$&(*&!!!
|
|
|
|
Post by aj2hall on Mar 29, 2023 17:36:52 GMT
College students turned out in record numbers in the last 3 elections. The majority voted Democratic. The Republican solution - voter suppression. Instead of altering their platform to appeal to younger voters, reaching out to them or any other strategy, they’re just trying to prevent them from voting. Infuriating. www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/us/politics/republicans-young-voters-college.htmlI don’t have access. Would you mind stating how they are trying to prevent them from voting so I can Google it? Sure, I will try copyng it. This is a really long link, but it's a gift article, no paywall. www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/us/politics/republicans-young-voters-college.html?unlocked_article_code=WzgejleGNKFEbBogMZN_tLZsF0aEICMz-uCPEhaKRRW90qxS2KMmkIwnDyAgax09RmCMXJ6Xmn2baxkgM85sq0nPQO811_JR0PybDjDx1W3-H7tLOEJB0ylyRg7JPiuacGe2ah6V02m0YtKZiVMyP6oEfhtUF_w9ayI0TSxqbeZ-CBQsDdl-nb1wMMID6ySt9u1zAVsvNYuBk1k0VzBRS6CPRifQMEqeqQHnwbcT0kdcXTWOwQRsq7R0pCDm6QAZ6ztIPHu8CigBOl1_EKkFWX5tlWXBcA1lNGhRlmSf6L8pP74IbqkuKd79okjbA-nOBjKtfkJt-_doT2C1r1_-OydIoINNgQ-x3BWPMemA&smid=url-shareRepublicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on College Campuses
Party officials across the country have sought to erect more barriers for young voters, who tilt heavily Democratic, after several cycles in which their turnout surged.
Alarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box, Republican lawmakers in a number of states have been trying to enact new obstacles to voting for college students.
In Idaho, Republicans used their power monopoly this month to ban student ID cards as a form of voter identification.
But so far this year, the new Idaho law is one of few successes for Republicans targeting young voters.
Attempts to cordon off out-of-state students from voting in their campus towns or to roll back preregistration for teenagers have failed in New Hampshire and Virginia. Even in Texas, where 2019 legislation shuttered early voting sites on many college campuses, a new proposal that would eliminate all college polling places seems to have an uncertain future.
“When these ideas are first floated, people are aghast,” said Chad Dunn, the co-founder and legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. But he cautioned that the lawmakers who sponsor such bills tend to bring them back over and over again.
“Then, six, eight, 10 years later, these terrible ideas become law,” he said.
Turnout in recent cycles has surged for young voters, who were energized by issues like abortion, climate change and the Trump presidency.
Did you know you can share 10 gift articles a month, even with nonsubscribers?
Share this article.
They voted in rising numbers during the midterms last year in Kansas and Michigan, which both had referendums about abortion. And college students, who had long paid little attention to elections, emerged as a crucial voting bloc in the 2018 midterms.
But even with such gains, Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights program for the Brennan Center for Justice, said there was still progress to be made.
“Their turnout is still far outpaced by their older counterparts,” Mr. Morales-Doyle said.
Now, with the 2024 presidential election underway, the battle over young voters has heightened significance.
Between the 2018 and 2022 elections in Idaho, registration jumped 66 percent among 18- and 19-year-old voters, the largest increase in the nation, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. The nonpartisan research organization, based at Tufts University, focuses on youth civic engagement.
Out of 17 states that generally require voter ID, Idaho will join Texas and only four others — North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee — that do not accept any student IDs, according to the Voting Rights Lab, a group that tracks legislation.
Arizona and Wisconsin have rigid rules on student IDs that colleges and universities have struggled to meet, though some Wisconsin schools have been successful.
Proponents of such restrictions often say they are needed to prevent voter fraud, even though instances of fraud are rare. Two lawsuits were filed in state and federal court shortly after Idaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, signed the student ID prohibition into law on March 15.
“The facts aren’t particularly persuasive if you’re just trying to get through all of these voter suppression bills,” Betsy McBride, the president of the League of Women Voters of Idaho, one of the plaintiffs in the state lawsuit, said before the bill’s signing.
A fight over out-of-state students in New Hampshire
In New Hampshire, which has one of the highest percentages in the nation of college students from out of state, G.O.P. lawmakers proposed a bill this year that would have barred voting access for those students, but it died in committee after failing to muster a single vote.
Nearly 59 percent of students at traditional colleges in New Hampshire came from out of state in 2020, according to the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts.
The University of New Hampshire had opposed the legislation, while students and other critics had raised questions about its constitutionality.
The bill, which would have required students to show their in-state tuition statements when registering to vote, would have even hampered New Hampshire residents attending private schools like Dartmouth College, which doesn’t have an in-state rate, said McKenzie St. Germain, the campaign director for the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights, a nonpartisan voting rights group.
Sandra Panek, one of the sponsors of the bill that died, said she would like to bring it back if she can get bipartisan support. “We want to encourage our young people to vote,” said Ms. Panek, who regularly tweets about election conspiracy theories. But, she added, elections should be reflective of “those who reside in the New Hampshire towns and who ultimately bear the consequences of the election results.”
A Texas ban on campus polling places has made little headway
In Texas, the Republican lawmaker who introduced the bill to eliminate all polling places on college campuses this year, Carrie Isaac, cited safety concerns and worries about political violence.
Voting advocates see a different motive.
“This is just the latest in a long line of attacks on young people’s right to vote in Texas,” said Claudia Yoli Ferla, the executive director of MOVE Texas Action Fund, a nonpartisan group that seeks to empower younger voters.
Students at the University of Texas at Austin lined up to cast their ballots on campus during the 2020 primary. A new proposal would eliminate all college polling places in the state.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Ms. Isaac has also introduced similar legislation to eliminate polling places at primary and secondary schools. In an interview, she mentioned the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers — an attack that was not connected to voting.
“Emotions run very high,” Ms. Isaac said. “Poll workers have complained about increased threats to their lives. It’s just not conducive, I believe, to being around children of all ages.”
The legislation has been referred to the House Elections Committee, but has yet to receive a hearing in the Legislature. Voting rights experts have expressed skepticism that the bill — one of dozens related to voting introduced for this session — would advance.
G.O.P. voting restrictions flounder in other states
In Virginia, one Republican failed in her effort to repeal a state law that lets teenagers register to vote starting at age 16 if they will turn 18 in time for a general election. Part of a broader package of proposed election restrictions, the bill had no traction in the G.O.P.-controlled House, where it died this year in committee after no discussion.
And in Wyoming, concerns about making voting harder on older people appears to have inadvertently helped younger voters. A G.O.P. bill that would have banned most college IDs from being used as voter identification was narrowly defeated in the state House because it also would have banned Medicare and Medicaid insurance cards as proof of identity at the polls, a provision that Republican lawmakers worried could be onerous for older people.
“In my mind, all we’re doing is kind of hurting students and old people,” Dan Zwonitzer, a Republican lawmaker who voted against the bill, said during a House debate in February.
But some barriers are already in place
Georgia has accepted student IDs only from public colleges and universities since 2006, so students at private institutions, including several historically Black colleges and universities, must use another form of identification.
Georgia has accepted student IDs only from public colleges and universities since 2006, a rule that means students at private institutions, like several historically Black colleges and universities, must use another form of identification. Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
In Ohio, which has for years not accepted student IDs for voting, Republicans in January approved a broader photo ID requirement that also bars students from using university account statements or utility bills for voting purposes, as they had in the past.
The Idaho bill will take effect in January. Scott Herndon and Tina Lambert, the bill’s sponsors in the Senate and the House, did not respond to requests for comment, but Mr. Herndon said during a Feb. 24 session that student identification cards had lower vetting standards than those issued by the government.
“It isn’t about voter fraud,” he said. “It’s just making sure that the people who show up to vote are who they say they are.”
Republicans contended that nearly 99 percent of Idahoans had used their driver’s licenses to vote, but the bill’s opponents pointed out that not all students have driver’s licenses or passports — and that there is a cost associated with both.
Mae Roos, a senior at Borah High School in Boise, testified against the bill at a Feb. 10 hearing.
“When we’re taught from the very beginning, when we first start trying to participate, that voting is an expensive process, an arduous process, a process rife with barriers, we become disillusioned with that great dream of our democracy,” Ms. Roos said. “We start to believe that our voices are not valued.” |
|
|
|
Post by aj2hall on Mar 29, 2023 20:04:44 GMT
This part really makes me mad. I have 2 college age boys, but both attend schools out of state. College students are here 9-10 months out of the year, they bear the consequences of the election results. The election results have a direct impact on funding for colleges and ultimately, the cost of tuition. The requirement to pay in state tuition was a blatant attempt to try to underfund the colleges and universities who receive more money for out of state students. During the Covid pandemic, the governor tried to exclude out of state students from getting the covid vaccine. College students are counted in the census and NH received vaccines for them. Out of state students get treated like 2nd class citizens.
A fight over out-of-state students in New Hampshire
In New Hampshire, which has one of the highest percentages in the nation of college students from out of state, G.O.P. lawmakers proposed a bill this year that would have barred voting access for those students, but it died in committee after failing to muster a single vote.
Nearly 59 percent of students at traditional colleges in New Hampshire came from out of state in 2020, according to the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts.
The University of New Hampshire had opposed the legislation, while students and other critics had raised questions about its constitutionality.
The bill, which would have required students to show their in-state tuition statements when registering to vote, would have even hampered New Hampshire residents attending private schools like Dartmouth College, which doesn’t have an in-state rate, said McKenzie St. Germain, the campaign director for the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights, a nonpartisan voting rights group.
Sandra Panek, one of the sponsors of the bill that died, said she would like to bring it back if she can get bipartisan support. “We want to encourage our young people to vote,” said Ms. Panek, who regularly tweets about election conspiracy theories. But, she added, elections should be reflective of “those who reside in the New Hampshire towns and who ultimately bear the consequences of the election results.”
|
|
|
|
Post by dewryce on Mar 29, 2023 20:31:05 GMT
Thank you aj2hall. This is insane. They’re not even trying to govern anymore, just rule. |
|
peabay
Prolific Pea
Posts: 9,598
Jun 25, 2014 19:50:41 GMT
|
Post by peabay on Mar 29, 2023 21:54:09 GMT
 This is a picture of the Presidential election results, by county, in PA in 2016. See that sea of blue in the middle of bright red? That's Centre County, where Penn State is located. My daughter, who attended Penn State, waited on line for 6 hours to vote on campus in 2012 and again in 2016. The kids stood outside for hours and hours in November temps in central PA to vote. This is exactly what they are targeting. |
|
|
|
Post by aj2hall on Apr 20, 2023 19:08:04 GMT
This is only going to get worse leading up to the 2024 election. Republicans know young people will vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, so they will ramp up their efforts to suppress their vote. This is the lawyer that tried to help overturn the election. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/20/cleta-mitchell-voting-college-students/NASHVILLE — A top Republican legal strategist told a roomful of GOP donors over the weekend that conservatives must band together to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters, according to a copy of her presentation reviewed by The Washington Post.
Cleta Mitchell, a longtime GOP lawyer and fundraiser who worked closely with former president Donald Trump to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, gave the presentation at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Nashville on Saturday.
The presentation — which had more than 50 slides and was labeled “A Level Playing Field for 2024” — offered a window into a strategy that seems designed to reduce voter access and turnout among certain groups, including students and those who vote by mail, both of which tend to skew Democratic.
Mitchell also targeted the preregistration of students, an apparent reference to the practice in some states of allowing 17-year-olds to register ahead of their 18th birthdays so they can vote as soon as they are eligible. |
|
|
|
Post by aj2hall on May 9, 2023 22:01:10 GMT
More attempts to suppress young voters. Vivek Ramaswamy, who is campaigning here in NH, suggested raising the voting age to 25. If he is representative of the Republican Party, they have completely given trying to win over young voters and will simply try to stop them from voting. Still trying to court the military by carving out an exception for them. The civics test sounds a lot like literacy tests from the Jim Crow south. www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/us/politics/ramaswamy-speeches.html“How about a constitutional amendment to make the voting age 25, but you can still vote at 18 if you serve the country or pass the civics test my mother passed to become a citizen?” The proposal might not win the hearts of Generation Z, but it appeals to older Republican primary voters who believe the country has lost its sense of citizenship and purpose. It might also resonate with those who understand how lopsided the youth vote is in favor of Democrats. |
|
|
|
Post by Merge on May 9, 2023 22:59:10 GMT
More attempts to suppress young voters. Vivek Ramaswamy, who is campaigning here in NH, suggested raising the voting age to 25. If he is representative of the Republican Party, they have completely given trying to win over young voters and will simply try to stop them from voting. Still trying to court the military by carving out an exception for them. The civics test sounds a lot like literacy tests from the Jim Crow south. www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/us/politics/ramaswamy-speeches.html“How about a constitutional amendment to make the voting age 25, but you can still vote at 18 if you serve the country or pass the civics test my mother passed to become a citizen?” The proposal might not win the hearts of Generation Z, but it appeals to older Republican primary voters who believe the country has lost its sense of citizenship and purpose. It might also resonate with those who understand how lopsided the youth vote is in favor of Democrats.Funny thing here - the Young Republicans are all mad about the committee vote to brig the “raise the age” for AR-15s to the floor. Republicans already perform poorly with that age group, and now they’ve angered the ones who actually do vote for them, so they’ll likely be doubling down on removing campus polling places to offset any loss of their Young R vote. |
|
|
|
Post by AussieMeg on May 10, 2023 0:22:09 GMT
The tale of two countries...... one country (well, one of the parties in that country) is trying everything in its power to prevent certain people from voting, and the other country fines people who don't vote. I have always wondered what the outcome of your elections would be, if the US had compulsory voting like we do here. Are the non-voters a 50/50(ish) split? Are the non-voters complacent Democrats? Or are they Republicans? Do these attempts at voter suppression rile up enough people to stand in the voting line for six hours like peabay's daughter? Or do they have the desired effect of keeping people away? |
|
|
|
Post by refugeepea on May 10, 2023 0:25:56 GMT
Voter suppression, banning books in K-12, and passing racist school voucher laws.
|
|
|
|
Post by refugeepea on May 10, 2023 0:28:49 GMT
“How about a constitutional amendment to make the voting age 25, but you can still vote at 18 if you serve the country or pass the civics test my mother passed to become a citizen?” There are already some high schools who require a civics test or something similar for graduation. |
|
|
|
Post by aj2hall on May 10, 2023 1:06:34 GMT
“How about a constitutional amendment to make the voting age 25, but you can still vote at 18 if you serve the country or pass the civics test my mother passed to become a citizen?” There are already some high schools who require a civics test or something similar for graduation. Yes, NH recently passed a bill requiring seniors to score a 70 or better on the same test that naturalized citizens take. www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2021-08-04/under-new-law-nh-high-school-seniors-must-pass-civics-exam-to-graduateI just worry that Republicans will take that to the extreme and make it impossible for young people to pass, similar to the literacy tests that black people had to take in the South. |
|
|
|
Post by Merge on May 10, 2023 1:07:31 GMT
“How about a constitutional amendment to make the voting age 25, but you can still vote at 18 if you serve the country or pass the civics test my mother passed to become a citizen?” There are already some high schools who require a civics test or something similar for graduation. All high school students in Texas - and probably most states - are required to take and pass US Government to graduate. And in Texas at least, they have to take it again in college. |
|
