Out-of-state students should plan ahead
As an out-of-state USC student, I would like to weigh in on the debate over South Carolina’s Voter ID law (“Law may disenfranchise students,” Sept. 15). I am a first-year graduate student from Massachusetts, the bluest of blue states, and, if the Democrats quoted in The Daily Gamecock are correct, I am the classic student voter that the leadership of this state would like to keep away from the polls.
I will be voting in local elections in my home state via absentee ballot this November. According to College Democrats President Victoria Black, absentee voting is something “that requires a lot of planning in advance, which ... students aren’t good at.” If participating in the electoral process means so little to someone that they can’t be bothered to plan for it in advance, perhaps that person shouldn’t be voting.
In 2010, the number of out-of-state undergrads living on campus (thus, those who couldn’t get a S.C. license due to lack of a permanent address) was 3015 — 14 percent of all undergrads, and only 10 percent of all USC students. If they can’t plan in advance for voting absentee, then they should simply declare residency and pay $25 for a S.C. license, valid for 10 years. Is voting in South Carolina elections worth $2.50 per year to these students? I hope so.
In 2008, a year of higher-than-typical voter turnout, only 44 percent of college-age (18-25) people reported voting, according to the U.S. Census. Apparently, far fewer than half of us even care to vote at all.
No students are being ‘disenfranchised’ by this law. You can only have one permanent residence, in one state — choose which state it will be, and get out and vote.
-Michael DuBois, first-year geography master’s student