Indiana legislature bill would restrict out-of-state college students from voting

Paying out-of-state tuition could cost students something more under legislation that will be debated Wednesday: their vote.

Under House Bill 1311, students who pay out-of-state tuition would not be able to vote in Indiana. 

Rep. Peggy Mayfield, the Martinsville Republican who filed the bill, said she's trying to resolve an issue about determining who is an Indiana resident.

"We're having people who are not necessarily residents voting in our elections," she said.

But legal experts, as well as lawmakers in both parties whose districts include some of Indiana's public universities, say there's a big problem with the bill, which will be debated in the House Elections and Apportionment Committee today: It's unconstitutional.

"I hope that's a quick hearing," said Lee Rowland, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which monitors voting rights issues across the nation. "Because, frankly, conditioning voting rights on a 12-month residency is so clearly unconstitutional that it would be an utter waste of the legislature's time to consider such a bill."

Mayfield and Rep. Milo Smith, the Columbus Republican who is chairman of the elections committee, said the students can still vote "where they live." That, they said, is not thecampus but their previous out-of-state address.

Mayfield said lawmakers may have to work on some issues with the bill -- including the fact that it treats public university students differently from those at private colleges, which don't distinguish between in-state and out-of-state students when it comes to tuition.

Mayfield argued that state law already bars students from voting on campus. Indiana law states that a person "does not gain residency in a precinct into which the person moves for temporary employment, educational purposes or other purposes without the intent of making a permanent home in the precinct." 

Rowland, though, said that statute does not mean the state can bar students from voting for the minimum one year it takes to convince a university that they are eligible for in-state tuition.

Indiana's constitution says a person who is at least 18 and who has been a resident of a precinct for the 30 days preceding an election may vote.

Chrissy Faessen, vice president of Rock the Vote, which encourages young people to vote, said courts have rejected efforts to set a higher bar for some to establish residency to vote than for others.

And the bar for getting in-state tuition can be very high, said Eddie VanBogaert. He was an Illinois resident who chose Purdue University. After four years as an undergraduate, paying out-of-state tuition, he stayed in West Lafayette, started a business and even got elected to the West Lafayette City Council -- and still had trouble convincing Purdue that he was eligible for in-state tuition for graduate school.

"I had to provide just a wild amount of (documents,)" VanBogaert said. "Leases, bank statements, W-2s, my car title, my driver's license, my business license. I even had the clerk-treasurer of West Lafayette write me a note."

That level of documentation, far more than other voters need to produce to register "shouldn't be the standard for fundamental voting rights," he said.

State Rep. Matt Pierce, a Democrat whose district includes Indiana University in Bloomington, said he had a similar experience. After four years of paying out-of-state tuition as an IU undergraduate, marrying and deciding Bloomington was his home weren't enough to qualify him for in-state tuition for law school.

Potentially tens of thousands of students could be affected. At Purdue, 42 percent of all students pay out-of-state tuition. At IU's Bloomington campus, nearly 45 percent do.

Joe Rust, 22, a junior who is student body president, was among a group of Purdue students who came to the Statehouse on Tuesday to talk to lawmakers about several bills, including this one. 

"If all of the students cannot vote for the legislators here in Indiana, the power of our voice shrinks," he said. "And if a student is spending multiple years in the state of Indiana, why would they not have the right to vote for legislators who are impacting not only their lives as students, but their lives as members of the community?"

Rust is from Seymour but votes in West Lafayette. 

"Why would I vote in an election where I no longer live, not even part time?" he said of Seymour. "I only go home every other month, if that."

But another Purdue student at the Statehouse on Tuesday, senior Trevvor D. Long, 21, said he supports Mayfield's bill.

"I just see it as one of the many aspects of being an out-of-state student," Long said. "They have the ability to vote absentee, and so many of them are only here for the four years. They can influence legislation for future generations in the state of Indiana."

Pierce said this is just the latest attempt by Republicans to reduce the votes of groups that typically vote Democratic, including collegestudents. And Aaron Dy, president of IU College Democrats, called it "a blatant attempt to disenfranchise a voting bloc that the GOP wants to keep home on election day." 

Rep. Randy Truitt, a West Lafayette Republican whose district includes Purdue, said he was opposed to anything that could depress the vote.

As a former city councilman, he said, "we worked so hard on making the students a part of our community, making sure that they abided by the rules that we had in place as a community. But in exchange, they are valued as members of the community. And whether they're there for a short period of time or not, from my perspective, they're part of our community, and I'm just not in favor of disenfranchising them."

Link to original article at IndyStar