One lawmaker’s plan to suppress student voters
The good news is that at least one state lawmaker continues working even after the legislative session has ended. The bad news is he’s working at voter suppression. This time, the target is college students. The Republican-controlled Legislature enjoyed a banner year in voter suppression this past session. For example, it made it much more difficult for regular Arizona citizens to get a voter initiative on the ballot, a right guaranteed by the state Constitution.
Why? Because an overwhelming majority of Arizona voters approved an initiative last November to raise the state’s minimum wage, and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry hated it. The chamber didn’t want anything like that — which helps working people instead of business owners — to happen ever again.
In signing the new law, Gov. Doug Ducey said, “This tweak to the law helps ensure the integrity of ballot measures moving forward.”
Translation: The law ensures ongoing big, fat campaign contributions from chamber members.
The Legislature also managed to create a law that turns an act of good citizenship into a crime.
This law restricts the ability of a voter to carry other voters’ mail-in ballots to the polls. There has never been any proof of fraud, or evidence that any signed and sealed ballots had been tampered with or altered.
But Democrats were better at doing this, so the Republicans who control the Legislature outlawed it.
Now we have Republican Rep. Bob Thorpe, who doesn’t want college students to vote ... in Arizona. Particularly in his district, which includes Northern Arizona University.
He argues that some students who live here don’t actually live here, because they have homes and families someplace else.
He told The Arizona Republic that when college students use their college address to register to vote, they “unfairly influence” our elections, and that isn’t right, since they live here “only six months out of the year.”
Thorpe has tried this voter-suppression stunt before, and the proposal didn’t go anywhere. The House Government Committee chairman, Republican Rep. Doug Coleman, didn’t give Thorpe’s previous bill a hearing, telling Capitol Media Services, “I think residency is where a person lives.” Well … duh. Thorpe’s plan would place all kinds of restrictions and requirements on some young voters, but it wouldn’t place the same restrictions on Arizona’s thousands of winter visitors.
Perhaps because our beloved snowbirds are more likely to vote Republican. While college students are less likely to “fly right.” It’s sad, really. What politicians like Thorpe can’t seem to grasp is that no democracy can soar (or even remain aloft) if some voters have their wings clipped.