Our laws provide for a simple means of voting when one is away from home.

The newspaper’s Feb. 16 editorial on LD 203, “An Act Concerning Student Voter Registration,” completely missed the point of the legislation. The editorial was laudatory in my objective “to protect the vote of the legal residents of Maine.”

It went on to comment on the lack of “critical mass of college voters” to make the bill worthy. There was also a very brief, and in my mind, specious argument that the bill raises constitutional issues.

Have we lost our principles? The numbers of students voting in communities where they have no vested interest is not the issue. One such student is one too many. The argument that many students come from similar geographic demographics is also far from the underlying point of the bill.

Our laws provide for a simple means of voting when one is away from home: the absentee ballot. It is a simple process used by our military personnel for years. Students should not be voting on local issues, especially when they may not be around to live under the consequences of their votes.

Let me address a couple of issues that might put this bill into proper perspective. First, out-of-state tuition. If, indeed, the student from out-of-state is permitted to vote on local issues – say in Orono – shouldn’t that same student be afforded the luxury of being considered an in-state resident for tuition purposes? That would only be a measure of consistency.

Maine’s secretary of state, Matthew Dunlap, has confided to me that Maine does have some real inconsistencies in its voting laws and the matter of tuition payments. How do we reconcile? Easy. Use the absentee ballot.

The second matter is the process of obtaining an in-state fishing license. One must reside continuously in Maine for three months, have applied for a Maine driver’s license, have registered their car in Maine (if owning, which I guess means paying the excise tax), have complied with Maine’s income tax laws, and finally be registered to vote in Maine.

Wow! Yet no such stringent requirements exist to register to vote here.

As for the alluded constitutional issues, the bill is firmly entrenched in Maine’s constitution. In Article II, Section I, it states unequivocally and unambiguously that “nor shall the residence of a student at any seminary of learning (college or university today) entitle the student to the right of suffrage in the city, town or plantation where such seminary is established. No person, however, shall be deemed to have lost residence by reason of the person’s absence from the state “

Again, that is why the absentee ballot is used.

As Joseph Reisert, associate professor of American constitutional law and chairman of the department of government at Colby College, recently wrote, “Far from being invidiously discriminatory, the idea behind LD 203 is laudable: It aims to ensure that college students, like everyone else, will vote only in the community that is truly their home.”

The bottom line is that no one is disenfranchised by my simple, common-sense bill. One either votes where they live, or, if unable to be home for voting, they must use the absentee ballot to exercise their rights to vote.

LD 203 going up in flames because of political hyperbole and rhetoric means the only loser is the local citizen.

Rep. L. Gary Knight, R-Livermore, sponsored LD 203. He represents Leeds, Livermore, Livermore Falls and Wayne. The Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee voted Wednesday 8-5 against the bill’s passage.