30-Something Democrats

30-SOMETHING DEMOCRATS -- (House of Representatives - July 15, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is recognized for half the time until midnight as the designee of the minority leader.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I will not quite take our whole half hour. It has been a very long week; and we know everyone wants to get home here, especially the staff, so we will be brief.

There are a couple of issues that I want to touch upon this evening as we have wrapped up legislative business for the week. This is our normal 30-Something hour where the gentleman from Florida and I and Members of the 30-Something Caucus on the Democratic side will talk about issues. Unfortunately, I am flying solo tonight, and I am missing my wing man from Florida who is not here with me. But I am going to persevere.

There are a couple of issues that I would just like to touch upon here in the next couple of minutes. One of the issues that we have been talking about over the past few weeks and almost a few months now is the issue of voter suppression for college students. This is a major issue throughout the country, regardless of what State you live in, regarding voter suppression for these college students. And in a lot of counties, the boards of elections and the people who work at the boards of elections will tell college students that they cannot vote where they live if they are away at school. They are saying that is not a permanent residence.

The Supreme Court established in 1979 under Federal law that students who reside in dorms are allowed to vote where they live. And there have been thousands of students throughout the country who have been denied their franchise because the local boards of election said that they cannot vote there by saying that they are not permanent residents. But both Federal and State courts have clearly established that students have the right to vote where they go to school, even if they live in a dorm.

So a lot of workers would say, well, you live in a dorm. Well, you cannot vote here; or you live out of State, you cannot vote here and you are not allowed. A lot of this has to do with the local politics. But the bottom line is that if you are away at school, whether it is in your State or outside of your State, you can register to vote where you go to school. And that is very important.

The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I are working on this with Rock the Vote, with the different Secretary of States organizations, and this is something that should be a bipartisan issue. This is not a Democratic issue. It is not a Republican issue.

We hear a lot of complaints about why young people will not engage in the political process; but if we as legislators are not taking issue with the fact that a lot of these young students are denied their right to vote, we cannot expect them to vote. We cannot expect them to want to participate in this system.

I want to share just a couple of stories here tonight: one from Texas, one from Arkansas, and I think the last one is from Maine regarding this issue. Also in Florida. Let me share one from Texas.

Prairie View A&M, a predominantly black university in a white county. The local district attorney threatened to prosecute students for fraud if they voted. So the local DA is telling these students that they cannot vote and threatening them with charges of fraud.

The students organized a march on Martin Luther King Day, sued the district attorney for voter intimidation. The Secretary of State issued a statement upholding the students' right to vote, and now the students are fighting to get a polling place on campus and to have early voting. The battle continues. That was in the Houston Chronicle on January 23 of this year.

Same kind of situation in Arkansas. Students with the support of the ACLU filed an injunction that would protect their right to register their college residency, and they won the appeal. Same situation at Florida A&M, and also the same situation in Maine.

So what we want to do tonight is just let these students know across the country, contact your Secretary of State's office. Demand that they issue you a copy of this Supreme Court decision. Tell them to contact the local board of elections. Contact the board of elections where your school is now so that they have time to get the information. We cannot wait until the last few days when you cannot even register to vote and the local board of election is still denying you your right to vote.

So this is major issue. I want to share with the people at home, give us an e-mail, 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. Send us an e-mail.

Unfortunately, we are getting stories left and right about the voter suppression, and it is something we really need to talk about and keep touching upon, but also, contact your State Secretary of State who is handling the elections because this is an issue that I think we need to engage, not only as young people but as people who are citizens of the United States of America because it is such an important issue.

I think it is an important issue for a variety of reasons. One is obviously the constitutional issue and the protection of each citizen's franchise, but another issue I think is this.

We are in a time of dramatic change in our country, and we are creating a new system. We are creating a new economic system. In many ways, we are creating a new political system and the way it should be run. Young people are vital to this process of creating a new economy, and we have talked here for many, many weeks about the importance of education, the importance of funding education, the importance of funding the Pell grants, the importance of making sure that students have access to student loans, the $25 billion that the Democratic proposal says we want to give to the States to reduce tuition costs across the country. That is vital and those programs are vital because we need to educate these kids and let them go out and create the new economy.

So, again, it is the 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. Send us an e-mail if you have any issues regarding voter suppression at your campus. Write your local Secretary of State.

Again, this is a bipartisan issue. This is not an issue that we want to be partisan, Democrat or Republican. This is an issue about protecting, because quite frankly there are universities out there that are Republican universities, and those students should have the right there as well.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, if it is a bipartisan issue, I would point out to the gentleman, since he referenced the Texas case, for those students who wish to vote in their college town, it is going to be necessary to change their legal residence to their college dormitory. It is done all the time. You can live in a college dorm, you can live in a tent, you can live in a van by the river, but you do need to change your legal residence. Many people elect not to do that because their residence changes frequently during their college years and they stay at their parents' residence. If they do that and their parents live in Houston and they live at Prairie View, they are not going to be able to vote in that town, but if you change your legal residence in Texas 30 days before the election, you can vote, no problem. Thank you.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman. He is absolutely right; you are allowed by law to vote. The problem is you get, in this case, a local district attorney, or in many, many instances that we have, you have people who work at the board of elections who just say, no, you are not allowed because they just do not understand the ruling.

So we are trying to get, and I hope the gentleman will help me, we are trying to get people to contact the Secretary of State offices all around the country and let them send a copy of this 1979 Supreme Court decision to the local boards and allow them to just have the knowledge, just have the information because the Supreme Court has already ruled. I agree, if you are not willing to live and make it a residency, maybe that is another issue, but these are kids who have established permanent residency at the college campus and have been denied their franchise.

Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman yield, let us not make the process more complicated than it need be. We do not need to involve the Secretary of State. They simply need to change their residence.

At the University of North Texas in my district in Denton, Texas, the NAACP organized a voter drive, and it was called "Sleep Here, Vote Here." They received an award from the NAACP for their efforts. They have had no problem instituting it.

The difficulty comes if you have not changed your residence 30 days before the election. People do not realize that, and then they feel they are unfairly disenfranchised.

Again, to go to the Secretary of State to do a simple change of address is unnecessarily complicating the process, and I am afraid the gentleman will drive more people out of the process by making them call Austin or whatever the capital of Ohio is, I do not even know, but making them call the State capital to talk to the Secretary of State.