At a time when headlines such as "Study Shows Youth Vote Down" and "College Students Apathetic" are commonly seen in the newspaper, 20-year-old College of William & Mary student Serene Alami was trying to get involved with politics in her college town of Williamsburg.
However, when Alami and three other students announced their intention to run for Williamsburg City Council in January and began recruiting students to register to vote, the city of Williamsburg began denying college students the right to register there.
Last week, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union asked the Virginia Supreme Court to hear Alami's case.
Alami, a college junior, works, lives and registers her car in Williamsburg, while her parents live in Roanoke. She was among several students who were told by the city that they must register in the jurisdiction where their parents live rather than where they attend school.
When she went to register, Alami said she was given a two-page questionnaire asking detailed questions about the permanency of her housing, income taxes, car registration and personal questions such as church membership and the activities she was involved in.
"Obviously they don't make everybody fill it out," Alami said. "It was targeted specifically to students."
Alami and the other prospective candidates for City Council were initially denied registration on the grounds that Williamsburg was not their permanent "domicile."
The ACLU took their cases to Federal and then to the Williamsburg Circuit Court, where the judge overturned student Luther Lowe's denial because his parents lived in Arkansas and he had committed to six years with the Virginia National Guard.
However, the judge upheld Alami's registration denial, and ruled that her attempt to run for a four-year seat on City Council was insufficient to prove she planned to live in Williamsburg for an "unlimited time." Another student, Rob Forrest, quit school and moved off campus so he could run for City Council.
A 1979 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that students can vote where they attend school if they establish residency. However, the requirements for residency remain unclear, and local governments have some discretion to determine this.
Charlottesville currently does allow students to register to vote, said Deputy Registrar Lorie Krizek.
"We do register U.Va. students because they are adults of voting age and we believe they know where they physically reside," Krizek said.
However, some college towns do not allow students to vote.
Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia ACLU, said situations where registrars prevent students from voting have surfaced three times in Virginia in the last four years. In 2000 and 2002, in the college towns of Fredericksburg and Blacksburg, students tried to mobilize other students to vote in order to affect an issue that was important to them. However, the registrars began denying the students' requests for registration as more students mobilized, Willis said.
"The registrar allowed students to register until it looked like large numbers of students were going to have an impact on the election," Willis said. "The three incidents where registrars have cracked down on student registration are situations where there appear to be mobilizations of students on a larger than normal scale."
Willis said registrars who deny students the right to vote where they attend school are depriving them of their constitutional rights.
Damien Cave's recent Rolling Stone article, "Mock the Vote," noted that voter discrimination has also occurred at Hamilton College, Skidmore College, Henderson State University and the University of New Hampshire.
"We're really dealing with a much broader problem in Virginia," Willis said. "Registrars are given a great deal of discretion to decide who to allow to register and who cannot."
Willis said the easy solution is to recognize college students as a special class of voters.
"They have a hometown and they have a place where they attend school," Willis said. "The law should simply make certain that students do not register in both, but allow students to choose the one that is the most meaningful for them to cast their votes."
Alami is currently waiting to hear whether the Virginia Supreme Court is going to hear her case.
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