Fight For the Right!

Our ability to vote is a significant part of being an American and for standing up for what we believe in. Young voter participation has been on the rise and many believe, myself included, that we should be encouraging our youth to be involved. The Washington Post reports that laws are being pushed in a number of states that could hinder students’ ability to vote.

Our right to vote is now a privilege thanks to Gov. Rick Scott. He recently signed a bill that made it more difficult for college students to vote. The bill has caused much commotion among the youth in that it requires students to have permanent residency in their college town in order to vote there, as well as forbid the ability to register on Election Day. Many feel that the bill is meant to target college students. By requiring them to register in advance and request an absentee ballot ahead of time decreases the amount of students who will actually vote.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, the Governor’s office received 15,443 emails about the bill, most arguing to veto the bill. The youth are fighting back! According to a recent article from the Huffington Post “How the War on Young Voters Is Deteriorating Our Democracy” Heather Smith reports that college students are speaking up,

In New Hampshire, College Democrats and College Republicans at Dartmouth have joined forces to fight against House Bill 176, which would redefine "domicile" residence for students as the state in which they lived prior to moving to campus and forcing them to vote absentee in states where they no longer reside. As Dartmouth student leaders Sy Mukherjee and Rich Sunderland noted in a recent Rock the Vote blog, New Hampshire State House Speaker William O'Brien has actually said that college students vote, "too liberal," "with their emotions," and that they lack sufficient "life experience" to vote in the state.

She also noted other people from different states across the US are fighting legislation, but they shouldn’t even be in that position. The problem is that some don’t want a lot of people voting, and others want to encourage voting.

As I read articles on encouraging the voting process I found a few solutions that states could use to serve the next generation’s voting process:

-Expand the early voting process

-Allow same day registration to voters

-Allow pre-registration for 16 to 17-year olds

-Online registration

Some people, like New Hampshire’s Speaker of the House, may think of the youth and college voters as “foolish” and lacking experience; but maybe their time as representatives would be better spent listening to us as citizens?