AUGUSTA – College students are part of the community in which they attend school, so they should continue to be allowed to vote there, several legislators argued Wednesday.
A bill to prevent college students from voting in the town where they attend school was defeated in the House, with 90 of 139 representatives voting against it.
Under the bill, students would not be allowed to use a college dormitory address to register to vote. Instead, they would be encouraged to vote absentee in their hometowns.
“It is a simple bill,” said sponsor Rep. Gary Knight, R-Livermore Falls. “It asks students to vote where they reside, not where they go to school.”
The bill sparked venomous comments from two of the body’s youngest members, Reps. Emily Cain, D-Orono, and Benjamin Pratt, D-Eddington, both 27.
Orono, being the home of the University of Maine, has a high concentration of college students, and Cain said students there invest themselves in their community, and a few ran for town council seats.
“There is no problem to solve,” Cain said. “This is assuming the worst in the students of Maine.”
Pratt said he went to college in Vermont. He was a volunteer firefighter there, and he said it was important to him to attend town meeting and feel like a member of that community.
“It’s unfathomable to tell them that, ‘We don’t value your vote,’ ” Pratt said.
Proponents of the bill, however, said students aren’t familiar enough with local issues.
In the northern town of Limestone, Rep. Peter Edgecomb, R-Caribou, said people don’t campaign for elected positions because they generally know one another.
“These students do not know the candidates and just by the look of them vote,” Edgecomb said. “In Limestone, they take all the kids at Job Corps and take them to vote by the bus load.”
Pratt countered, “There are plenty of people who are not students who don’t know enough to make a valuable decision.”
Rep. John Patrick, D-Rumford, said the public hearing generated one of the largest responses the committee saw all year. College students packed the hearing room to defend their right to vote in the town where they go to school.
“No similar provision appears in any other state’s election laws,” Patrick said. “This leads Maine in the wrong direction and is undesirable in terms of policy.”
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