There are a lot of wealthy, liberal New Yorkers who attend my university in Georgia. As one could imagine, they can be annoying with their activist hijinks during the academic year. Unfortunately, the progressive propaganda they peddle is not confined to university grounds.
It was shocking to see my northeastern, cosmopolitan peers posting pictures of themselves on Instagram posing in front of metro Atlanta polling stations on Nov. 3. Knowing that those people could decide the outcome of one of that day’s most consequential races was downright aggravating.
Under state law, it was all perfectly legal. Non-Georgians are free to register for and vote in Georgia elections, provided they are citizens with a domicile in the state.
What’s so bad about college students voting though? Aren’t they entitled to a voice in the country’s civic process?
Of course, they are — but they should vote in their native localities.
Students who live in another state have no real stake in the future of the state where they’re just studying for four years. The vast majority of them will likely be gone once their tenure as undergraduates has expired, yet their votes are held in the same regard as permanent residents of the state. Choices college students make on an ideological whim could have lasting effects that many true Georgians vehemently resent.
Given that university students vote far to the left of practically every other voting group, their presence, especially in swing states such as Georgia, can often have an outsize effect on state, national, and local policy outcomes. Everyday families and workers often find themselves stuck with a state significantly more liberal than they would otherwise prefer all because a bunch of college students voted blue at the behest of Taylor Swift.
In a way, non-Georgians voting in Georgia’s elections amounts to suppressing the will of the state’s people. When those who permanently live and work in the state vote one way, and out-of-state ideologues narrowly swing an election the other way, that doesn’t seem like a genuine expression of representative democracy to me.
Transitory college students do not have to live with the long-term consequences of their decisions, nor are they particularly attuned to the substantive issues facing people of the state in which they are guests. While it would be nice if we could force them to vote in their hometowns, rather than letting them pollute the rest of the country with their bad ideas, there doesn’t seem to be a constitutional remedy for blocking out-of-state students from voting.
At the moment, the only viable answer is to fight fire with fire. Left-wing organizations pour an inordinate volume of financial resources into turning out college students to vote. As discussed above, this is a boon to liberal politicians, often to the detriment of the majority of the state’s permanent population. Conservatives need their own grassroots initiatives aimed at getting conservative college students to the ballot box. We will never match the raw numbers of support liberals can levy from academic institutions, but we could mitigate the effectiveness of the strategy by limiting the net effect of student voters on elections.
I intend to rally my conservative, non-Georgian college friends to vote in the state’s 2022 midterm election. Though I oppose people from one place voting in another, retaking the government from radicals that currently occupy it takes precedence over principle.
