Scare Tactics Used on Young Voters: A Case Study at Virginia Tech

The scare tactics against young voters have started this fall.

In Montgomery County, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech, the college students were treated to a county-issued press release that contained gross exaggerations of the consequences should students not originally from the county register to vote using their college address:

The Code of Virginia states that a student must declare a legal residence in order to register. A legal residence can be either a student’s permanent address from home or their current college residence. By making Montgomery County your permanent residence, you have declared your independence from your parents and can no longer be claimed as a dependent on their income tax filings — check with your tax professional. If you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding. And, if you change your registration to Montgomery County, Virginia Code requires you to change your driver’s license and car registration to your present address within 30 days.

When asked the rationale for the press release, the county registrar of elections explained that in the student rush to get involved with GOTV drives, they often forget the consequences of the change in registration. Experts, like Sujatha Jahagirdar from the PIRG New Voters Project, though, explain that many of these warnings just aren't true.

“For a county registrar to issue what really are in our experience unsubstantiated warnings for a particular demographic is alarming,” said Jahagirdar. “It’s upsetting that this is coming up in Virginia. But it’s even more upsetting that the ability of young people to vote is questioned in many other states too.”

She added: “In 25 years of registering young voters around the country, none of the staff has ever heard of a single incident where a student has lost their tax status or their scholarship because of where they’ve registered to vote.”

Of course, the Obama campaign was all over this. The Virginia spokesman for the campaign, Kevin Griffis, explained that in their calls to the top ten health insurers in the country, none of them told the campaign that voters would be penalized for changing their voter registration. And some of those companies even laughed at the thought.

The reason this is important is clear when one looks at the voter registration numbers in Montgomery County this cycle. 2,000 voters have been added to the rolls in the county, but about 25 students have already called the headquarters to inquire about re-changing their registration.