Voting is HARD. (sigh)
McClatchy Rob is just beside himself. According to his headline today, college students are going to have to work harder. (To vote, that is.) *Apparently, working harder is a bad thing, these days.*
I realize that Rob is about a decade or two older than I am, but I don’t recall — during college — that voting was all that hard. I was matriculating in our nation’s capital. I foresook the honor of voting for whoever was opposing bong-hitting mayor-for-life Marion Barry to cast my vote in my home county in North Carolina. I — and a lot of other college students — took time to get absentee ballots. Our military folks, deployed away from home, get absentee ballots. I see no problem with holding college students — hung over from last nights’ frat party — to the same standard our folks in uniform are held to. NONE.
How hard is it to get an absentee ballot? I did about three minutes of research on Google. Here is the absentee voter info I found for North Carolina, New Jersey and Connecticut.
It’s not about suppressing anyone’s vote. It’s making sure that you actually vote in the place where you maintain residency. If your parents in New Jersey claim you as a dependent, you need to vote as a resident of their voting precinct.
When you’re living in the dorms in Chapel Hill, you really and truly do not have a stake in the community. You don’t pay taxes locally. You don’t own property locally. You vote for the city council and General Assembly, then go home to New Jersey and leave us to live with your choices.
The whining about the ID requirement is ridiculous. WHO honestly has no form of ID proving who they are and where they live, beyond a reasonable doubt? I have to show an ID to buy my allergy medication at the local pharmacy. THAT is not even mentioned in The Constitution.
I think it is a great idea to disqualify college IDs. I got my master’s degree at an institution outside of the county where I reside. I had to obtain a student ID while taking courses there. The ID didn’t mention any kind of physical address for me. Yet, if I was dishonest, I could have used it as a method for voting in the college’s county — even though I didn’t live there.
Rob Christiansen was always biased, but before McClatchy took over the N&O, at least he had some journalistic standards. Now he is nothing but a partisan mouthpiece for the far left.
Students should vote where they are a resident. If an out of state student becomes a resident of North Carolina, he is required by the motor vehicle laws to obtain an NC drivers license within 30 days as his out of state license is no longer valid. If an out of state student fails to obtain a NC license as required if he becomes an NC resident, then that is proof positive that he is NOT an NC resident and NOT entitled to vote in North Carolina, no matter what whining socialists like Rob think.
Robbie and the rest of the ID scammers fail to mention that proof of identity and residency is required to register to vote. That is, a valid ID to prove identification and something to prove the registrant lives where they say they live. So what NC is doing, like 30+ other states is saying not only must you prove residency and identification to register, but you must at least prove identity again to cast a ballot. No constitutional prohibition there. Just common sense.
Walt-in-Durham
1. I did the absentee ballot thing too, back in 1980. Most of my classmates did the same. I figure that if you’re smart enough, and hard working enough, to be in college, getting an absentee ballot shouldn’t be an issue. Certainly it’s less of a hassle than, say, doing a Moral Monday protest (ahem).
2. I come from Michigan. Michigan has had a voter ID bill since 1996, enforced since the first Obama election. None… and I repeat, NONE… of the horror stories have happened there. Even Wayne County (“Detroit”) figured it out, and yes, black voter participation followed national trends. BTW, they have an old-fashioned rule — you vote on VOTING DAY. So I have NO compassion to people who whine about only having, what, 7 days under the new rules?
Liberals should first check to see if their projected horrors really do happen when a situation exists. It would actually make conservatives work a bit harder to refute them…