Penn students should be able to vote near their residences

In 2002, at the University of Wisconsin, there were reports that Republican students wrongly told their out-of-state peers that they couldn't vote in Wisconsin. In 2004, at the University of Arizona, the county registrar's office wrongly told a Fox News reporter that not all students could vote on campus. Student voter suppression is a reality -- will the University of Pennsylvania be next?

Penn students, like all voters in Pennsylvania, generally have the right to vote in a polling place in their election district, of which there are several in each ward. For example, each of the high rises is in its own division. The law (25 P.S. 2727, for those of you playing "Election Law: the Home Game") does allow an exception: If there are no public buildings available in the district, polling places may be located in an immediately adjacent district.

Philadelphia, however, is not following the law. With the exceptions of Kings Court/English House and Sansom Place East and West, students in Penn housing vote at the far-east end of campus at David Rittenhouse Laboratories. Therefore, even considering the above exception, student voters in Harrison, Harnwell and Gregory college houses, along with Mayer Hall, are illegally being required to travel too far to vote. And this voting rights violation really makes a difference in student turnout. According to the Penn College Democrats, in 2002 only 29 residents of Harnwell made it to the voting booth.

Additionally, as the University has indicated that it would be willing to provide public-access buildings to be used as polling places in districts now served by DRL, there is no good reason why students should be stripped of their right to vote in the district in which they live, and I'm not the only one who thinks that way. The College Democrats believe that to be the case, as do the non-partisan Penn American Civil Liberties Union, and even the College Republicans concurred. Or rather, they used to.

After 2002's abysmal campus voter turnout, the leaders of the campus partisan groups began working to make it easier for students to vote. Their proposal to add polling places slowly worked its way through the University. Finally, Penn was set to put its support behind the initiative and advocate the change to the city commissioners.

Then last week, as a last step, Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Carol Scheman asked the heads of the College Democrats and College Republicans to notify their respective party ward leaders. After doing so, at the very last minute, the College Republicans dropped their support for the initiative. Without bipartisan support, the University canceled its public advocacy for the change in polling places.

In an e-mail to Scheman and others, College Republicans Chairwoman Stephanie Steward explained that the change in her group's support was for two main reasons. First, she argued that a single polling place avoided confusion by ensuring that students know at which polling place they are registered, even if they moved from year to year. Second, she argued that more polling places would require more Republican poll watchers to prevent voter fraud. Her group has instead proposed moving the consolidated polling place elsewhere on campus.

None of these arguments constitute a good reason to deprive students of their statutory rights. First, given that the College Republicans boasted an active membership of 300 in this newspaper last week, the need for a few more poll watchers should be a non-issue.

Second, looking up one's polling place on campus requires one to visit just one Web site: http://www.seventy.org/maps/pollingplaces/ward27.html. Moreover, claiming that all of Penn currently votes at one place is simply inaccurate -- students in Sansom East and West, KCEH and off-campus housing already vote elsewhere -- and giving that as justification for violating voters' rights is disingenuous at best.

Finally, moving the polling place to another central location would simply not accomplish the original goal of making voting more accessible by allowing students to vote in their own division as the law suggests.

Three things should occur to resolve this situation. First, the College Republicans ought to listen to their consciences and restore their formerly staunch and principled support for this initiative. If they deem it necessary, then they should help inform students of the changes. Any other action on their part is simply shameful, especially as they changed their support at the very last minute (their party has a word for such reversals).

Second, while the University should remain non-partisan, which would better live up to that standard: defending students' voting rights and access to the political process, or letting one partisan group on campus veto an action the University would otherwise take?

Finally, the city should, as the law allows, take its own initiative to add more polling places on campus. The University has said it would accommodate the space requirements.

Students already vote too infrequently, and denying students their voting rights only makes things worse. Student voter suppression has happened before, and sadly it will likely happen again. Let us do what we can to keep it from happening here.Kevin Collins is a junior Political Science major from Milwaukee. ...And Justice For All appears on Tuesdays.

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