AUGUSTA – College students Wednesday defended their right to vote where they study during a public hearing on a bill that, if passed, would bar students living in campus housing from registering to vote in their college towns.

State Rep. Gary Knight, R-Livermore Falls, introduced the bill because he contends many students from away don’t have much stake in the towns they call home during the school year.

“I don’t want kids from New Jersey voting for our state representatives,” he said prior to the public hearing. “They don’t contribute to your tax base, and they didn’t choose to come to Maine because of the political scene. I’m not taking away any of their voting rights. I’m just asking them to vote where they live.”

Organizations representing Maine’s college Democrats have condemned the proposed bill, saying no students studying in Maine should be disenfranchised.

What’s more, said Bowdoin College student Alex Cornell Du Houx, passing or even considering Knight’s bill would send the wrong message to young people in Maine.

“We really want to get college students civically engaged. This bill will disenfranchise and discourage students from becoming engaged in their (college) communities and at a time when we want to encourage students to become a part of Maine communities,” he said before the hearing.

“There’s something bigger than the bill at stake,” said House Speaker Glenn Cummings, D-Portland. “Without their participation, this isn’t a full democracy.” But locals involved in town government see the issue differently.

“I’m torn,” Farmington Selectman Charles Murray said. “I certainly don’t think you should deprive someone of the right to vote, but I also feel people should vote where they reside.

“I do have a sympathy for the bill, and I don’t think it was forwarded with any effort to deprive people of their right to vote,” he added.

The worry in small college towns like Farmington, he said, is that students could affect town government if they mobilized and came to town meeting.

“If … they chose to espouse any cause, and if they could bring 200 students to a town meeting, they could pass anything they wanted to,” Murray said. “And if they weren’t residents of the town it wouldn’t be, in my mind, representative government.”

Murray said he hasn’t seen any examples of that happening in Farmington, but Town Clerk Leanne Pinkham said every year on voting day she registers hundreds of new voters, and most of them are students.

The bill wasn’t meant to be a partisan issue, Knight said, even though it was introduced with only Republicann support.

“I had no idea this was such a controversial issue,” said Knight, who was sworn into office just two months ago. Had he known, he said, he’d have gathered signatures from Democrats as well.

The bill wouldn’t disenfranchise college students because absentee ballots are easy to get, said Bill Crandall, faculty advisor for the University of Maine at Farmington’s Republican group. It’s about local control, not party politics, he said.

“What I would like to point out,” he said, “is if you were to go to any of the colleges or universities, they have a very strict in-state versus out-of-state (tuition) criteria.”

“It upsets me (college kids) can have such an impact – like on TABOR – and not have to worry about the consequences,” said Crandall, referring to the taxpayer bill of rights that was rejected by statewide voters in November.

Henry Beck, president of the Maine College Democrats, and Cornell Du Houx disagree. Statewide elections and referendums can have a huge impact on public school budgets, they said. College students, both from Maine and away, pay that price.

State representatives don’t have much of an impact on the colleges, said Matt Bray, president of UMF’s College Republicans. Bray said he supports the bill but his biggest issue with voting in Maine has nothing to do with partisanship, and everything to do with election security.

Students can easily vote in one town and then go vote in another, and no one would ever know, he said.

When a group of college kids get together and vote someone into office in November, and then leave town for the summer, or for good, the town’s residents are left unrepresented, he said.

“I’ve heard people say the voice of the people in Farmington – the people who haven’t come here from Massachusetts to study – their voices aren’t being represented in Augusta,” he said.

Knight’s bill next goes before the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee for a workshop that has yet to be scheduled. The bipartisan committee will recommend a position to the House and Senate for a final vote.