Collegiate vote a new force in American elections

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32703, 4 September 1971, Page 13

Collegiate vote a new force in American elections

For most Americans—and for the state and Federal legislators who so overwhelmingly approved it—the twentysixth Amendment lowering the voting age to 18 is an idea whose time has clearly arrived. But for the citizens of small towns with large universities, the amendment is the most ominous development since the installation of income tax. From Amherst, Massachusetts (7000 registered over--21 voters; 15,000 potential student voters) to Gainesville,. Florida (22,000 registered voters; 20,000 student population), to Bloomington, Illinois (population 43,000, in-

eluding children; university population 31,000) to a dozen similarly beset towns on the West Coast, citizens are living with the possibility that their local governments may be taken over by “transient,” non-taxpaying students.

“I’m going to fight this thing like hell,” says New Hamshire’s Attorney-General, Mr Warren Rudman. And as a frightening example, he points to the state university’s Durham campus where students outnumber townsmen by 5 tq 1. "What happens if these kinds decide that teachers need a minimum salary of $9OOO and that the towfi needs a new high school?” he asks. “They float a bond issue and then graduate and move on to greener pastures. And who’s left holding the bag?” Idealism feared Two out of three Americans, a recent Gallup poll shows, are against collegians voting at school. And across the country, it is not the radicalism but the idealism of the 18-to-21-year-dlds that is most feared. Local officials seem relatively unworried that student takeovers will result in legalised drugs, free abortions and the like. What really disturbs them is the possible damage to their pocketbooks. “What if they elect a town council that gets carried away on this ecology kick?” asks a New Haven, Connecticut, city official. “They could make the anti-pollution laws so stiff it could drive out factories. And the students wouldn’t be hurt Their money comes from daddy.” But the irresponsibility of the student office holder cannot be taken for granted. Three years ago. University of Wisconsin students managed to elect a long-haired, somewhat scruffy looking graduate student named Paul Soglin to the Madison city council. Today Mr Soglin, aged 26, frets about the old Cictures of him that are still eing used and offers statistics to show that his reelection in 1970 could have been accomplished even without the student vote. “People were afraid we were going to saddle the townspeople with big bond issues and would not be concerned with city problems as a whole,” says Mr Soglin. “But I think we have a better grasp of city development problems, traffic engineering and all the nitty-gritty issues.” Still, Mr Soglin and the three students who have followed him to the city council have not turned conservative. “Probably the key difference ,is that we accept civil disobedience,” he says. “When we take oath as a city official, the law is not so sacred that we drop all moral responsibility." , But Soglin and his fellow student councilmen were more than 21 when elected

and had established their residency. It is a different story with the new crop of potential voters, most of whom live in dormitories and are still considered permanent residents of their parents’ homes. It is this technicality on which those who fear student bloc-voting base their hopes. So far, only six states (Massachusetts, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Washington) are allowing students to register in the college towns where they live most of the year Some states are marking time while others are either passing or pondering various laws that would permit students to register only in their hometowns. And in Congress, bills have been proposed that would permit students to vote in national elections while at college but not in local ones. It is a nice but not neat legal problem. Forcing the students to go home to vote or to go through the cumber: some process of absentee ballotting clearly makes the voting right more difficult for them than for people who need only travel a few •blocks to their local polling place. On the other hand, most students do not pay taxes in their university communities and do not intend to make their homes there. Predictably, as the states and communities set up laws and processes designed to prevent students voting in college towns, court actions are getting underway. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union and -other civil rights groups have begun such actions in 11 states. Typical of local efforts to keep students from voting in their university communities is the procedure developed by election officials in the Champaign-Urbana area where 31,000 University of Illinois students could conceivably dominate community politics. Evidence needeu Champaign County Clerk Dennis Bing, the man in charge of election registration, says that “in reality, the • students’ hearts are not here” and he clearly intends to see that their votes are not there either. “They’ll have to present pretty good evidence,” he warns, “that they’re on their own, that they are selfsupporting and receive no funds from their parents and that they live here the year around. They could present evidence that their car is registered here or show us state and Federal income tax forms to prove their parents do not supnort them. “And we’d probably ask if they go home for summer or Christmas and, if they do, that could be evidence that they aren’t permanent residents here.” .

Mr Bing is a Republican. So is California’s AttorneyGeneral, Evelle Younger, who has made a ruling (now being tested in the State supreme court) that unmarried 18-to--21-year-olds are required to register in the district where their parents reside. Indeed, the opposition to students voting in college towns is led to a large extent by Republicans of all stripes. Recently, New York’s Governor. Nelson Rockefeller quietly signed a bill making it all but impossible for students who cannot prove permanent residence to register where they go to school. On the other hand, Democrats tend with, of course, some exceptions, to support student' voting. Naturally, it cannot be known how much this attitude expresses Democratic liberalism and how much Democratic cognisance that both the polls and the early registration figures show young voters going their way by 2-to-l margins or better. Poor response At any rate, many Democrats are talking up the oncampus Vote, particularly in California where the 1.1 million persons between 18 and 21 have been registering Democratic by almost 3-to-l. “People who are against it have a paranoic fear of young people,” says California’s Secretary of State, Edmund G. Brown, jnr., the up-and-coming son of the former governor. “But they forget that people who drop out of society drop out of politics." But if present indications are borne out, the majority of the young may not get into politics, let alone drop out. To date, campus registration drives have mostly fizzled. There is an occasional successful one. to be sure; at Queens College in New York City, for instance, 80 per cent of the eligibles turned out. But a drive at the University of Florida at Gainesville was more typical. There 1400, not the anticipated 14,000, actually registered. And another interesting aspect of the 18-to-21 vote remains to be probed. Though students at the prestige schools and the huge state universities have .got—or brought down on themselves —most of the attention, it is important to put the numbers of all these potential voters in perspective. Many of them are in junior colleges and smaller institutions which tend to be more politically conservative. And half the under-21 vote isn’t in school at all. They are working people, housewives—and the unemployed. So despite the understandable fears of the college towns and of a large number of office holders and taxpayers, the menace of the 18-to-21-year-old voter has yet to be proved.—Newsweek Feature Service.