The Virginia State Board of Elections moved Saturday to remove barriers that have made it hard for college students to vote and streamline inconsistent local policies for establishing residency.
The proposal, which awaits a nod from the U.S. Justice Department, won unanimous approval from the three-member board after months of deliberation by the Virginia Residency Task Force.
Under the new guidelines, local registrars would be barred from refusing a student’s voter registration simply because that student listed a dorm as his address. A person would be allowed to register if he planned to remain in the area, barring a change in circumstances that could cause him to leave.
“It all falls back on the intent of the voter,” said Nancy Rodrigues, secretary of the Board of Elections.
The General Assembly, at its 2009 legislative session, tasked the board with creating a consistent policy for establishing a voter’s residency. The effort stemmed from problems with registering college students before last year’s presidential election, and brought together voters rights advocates, political parties and registrars from around the state to craft a solution.
The American Civil Liberties Union, while praising some elements of the proposal, quarreled with terminology it said left the door open to further confusion. Language in the new guidelines would allow a person to establish residency in Virginia if he planned to stay for an “unlimited” time.
“To say that you have to intend to stay where you are for an unlimited time is at best confusing,” said Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU.
At worst, he said the language “could be interpreted by a registrar to mean that you have to express that you plan on never moving out of your current address to register to vote, and that’s patently absurd.”
Last year, students seeking to register to vote using their college addresses faced wildly different policies from local officials. At Virginia Tech, where Democrat Barack Obama mounted a large-scale voter drive, the local registrar erroneously warned students that a change in residency could have severe consequences for taxes and scholarships.
