[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 98 (Thursday, July 15, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H5899-H5901]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         30-SOMETHING DEMOCRATS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is recognized for 
half the time until midnight as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I will not quite take our whole half 
hour. It has been a very long week; and we know everyone wants to get 
home here, especially the staff, so we will be brief.
  There are a couple of issues that I want to touch upon this evening 
as we have wrapped up legislative business for the week. This is our 
normal 30-Something hour where the gentleman from Florida and I and 
Members of the 30-Something Caucus on the Democratic side will talk 
about issues. Unfortunately, I am flying solo tonight, and I am missing 
my wing man from Florida who is not here with me. But I am going to 
persevere.
  There are a couple of issues that I would just like to touch upon 
here in the next couple of minutes. One of the issues that we have been 
talking about over the past few weeks and almost a few months now is 
the issue of voter suppression for college students. This is a major 
issue throughout the country, regardless of what State you live in, 
regarding voter suppression for these college students. And in a lot of 
counties, the boards of elections and the people who work at the boards 
of elections will tell college students that they cannot vote where 
they live if they are away at school. They are saying that is not a 
permanent residence.
  The Supreme Court established in 1979 under Federal law that students 
who reside in dorms are allowed to vote where they live. And there have 
been thousands of students throughout the country who have been denied 
their franchise because the local boards of election said that they 
cannot vote there by saying that they are not permanent residents. But 
both Federal and State courts have clearly established that students 
have the right to vote where they go to school, even if they live in a 
dorm.
  So a lot of workers would say, well, you live in a dorm. Well, you 
cannot vote here; or you live out of State, you cannot vote here and 
you are not allowed. A lot of this has to do with the local politics. 
But the bottom line is that if you are away at school, whether it is in 
your State or outside of your State, you can register to vote where you 
go to school. And that is very important.
  The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) and I are working on this with 
Rock the Vote, with the different Secretary of States organizations, 
and this

[[Page H5900]]

is something that should be a bipartisan issue. This is not a 
Democratic issue. It is not a Republican issue.
  We hear a lot of complaints about why young people will not engage in 
the political process; but if we as legislators are not taking issue 
with the fact that a lot of these young students are denied their right 
to vote, we cannot expect them to vote. We cannot expect them to want 
to participate in this system.
  I want to share just a couple of stories here tonight: one from 
Texas, one from Arkansas, and I think the last one is from Maine 
regarding this issue. Also in Florida. Let me share one from Texas.

                              {time}  2310

  Prairie View A&M, a predominantly black university in a white county. 
The local district attorney threatened to prosecute students for fraud 
if they voted. So the local DA is telling these students that they 
cannot vote and threatening them with charges of fraud.
  The students organized a march on Martin Luther King Day, sued the 
district attorney for voter intimidation. The Secretary of State issued 
a statement upholding the students' right to vote, and now the students 
are fighting to get a polling place on campus and to have early voting. 
The battle continues. That was in the Houston Chronicle on January 23 
of this year.
  Same kind of situation in Arkansas. Students with the support of the 
ACLU filed an injunction that would protect their right to register 
their college residency, and they won the appeal. Same situation at 
Florida A&M, and also the same situation in Maine.
  So what we want to do tonight is just let these students know across 
the country, contact your Secretary of State's office. Demand that they 
issue you a copy of this Supreme Court decision. Tell them to contact 
the local board of elections. Contact the board of elections where your 
school is now so that they have time to get the information. We cannot 
wait until the last few days when you cannot even register to vote and 
the local board of election is still denying you your right to vote.
  So this is major issue. I want to share with the people at home, give 
us an e-mail, [email protected]. Send us an e-mail.
  Unfortunately, we are getting stories left and right about the voter 
suppression, and it is something we really need to talk about and keep 
touching upon, but also, contact your State Secretary of State who is 
handling the elections because this is an issue that I think we need to 
engage, not only as young people but as people who are citizens of the 
United States of America because it is such an important issue.
  I think it is an important issue for a variety of reasons. One is 
obviously the constitutional issue and the protection of each citizen's 
franchise, but another issue I think is this.
  We are in a time of dramatic change in our country, and we are 
creating a new system. We are creating a new economic system. In many 
ways, we are creating a new political system and the way it should be 
run. Young people are vital to this process of creating a new economy, 
and we have talked here for many, many weeks about the importance of 
education, the importance of funding education, the importance of 
funding the Pell grants, the importance of making sure that students 
have access to student loans, the $25 billion that the Democratic 
proposal says we want to give to the States to reduce tuition costs 
across the country. That is vital and those programs are vital because 
we need to educate these kids and let them go out and create the new 
economy.
  So, again, it is the [email protected]. Send us an e-
mail if you have any issues regarding voter suppression at your campus. 
Write your local Secretary of State.
  Again, this is a bipartisan issue. This is not an issue that we want 
to be partisan, Democrat or Republican. This is an issue about 
protecting, because quite frankly there are universities out there that 
are Republican universities, and those students should have the right 
there as well.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, if it is a bipartisan issue, I would point 
out to the gentleman, since he referenced the Texas case, for those 
students who wish to vote in their college town, it is going to be 
necessary to change their legal residence to their college dormitory. 
It is done all the time. You can live in a college dorm, you can live 
in a tent, you can live in a van by the river, but you do need to 
change your legal residence. Many people elect not to do that because 
their residence changes frequently during their college years and they 
stay at their parents' residence. If they do that and their parents 
live in Houston and they live at Prairie View, they are not going to be 
able to vote in that town, but if you change your legal residence in 
Texas 30 days before the election, you can vote, no problem. Thank you.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman. He is 
absolutely right; you are allowed by law to vote. The problem is you 
get, in this case, a local district attorney, or in many, many 
instances that we have, you have people who work at the board of 
elections who just say, no, you are not allowed because they just do 
not understand the ruling.
  So we are trying to get, and I hope the gentleman will help me, we 
are trying to get people to contact the Secretary of State offices all 
around the country and let them send a copy of this 1979 Supreme Court 
decision to the local boards and allow them to just have the knowledge, 
just have the information because the Supreme Court has already ruled. 
I agree, if you are not willing to live and make it a residency, maybe 
that is another issue, but these are kids who have established 
permanent residency at the college campus and have been denied their 
franchise.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman yield, let us not make the 
process more complicated than it need be. We do not need to involve the 
Secretary of State. They simply need to change their residence.
  At the University of North Texas in my district in Denton, Texas, the 
NAACP organized a voter drive, and it was called ``Sleep Here, Vote 
Here.'' They received an award from the NAACP for their efforts. They 
have had no problem instituting it.
  The difficulty comes if you have not changed your residence 30 days 
before the election. People do not realize that, and then they feel 
they are unfairly disenfranchised.
  Again, to go to the Secretary of State to do a simple change of 
address is unnecessarily complicating the process, and I am afraid the 
gentleman will drive more people out of the process by making them call 
Austin or whatever the capital of Ohio is, I do not even know, but 
making them call the State capital to talk to the Secretary of State.

  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Reclaiming my time, Columbus is the capital of the 
State of Ohio, and the point I want to make, and the gentleman 
reiterated the point, absolutely, if you are not a permanent resident, 
that is one thing. But we have kids, students around the country who 
want to be registered as permanent residents, they want to vote at the 
college campus, and the local DA is saying we are going to charge you 
with fraud or you are not a permanent resident.
  So we are saying, given those facts, you should be able to register 
at that college campus and vote at that college campus, and all we want 
to do is not complicate the process. We want the Secretary of States to 
issue the 1979 Supreme Court ruling to the local boards so that they 
know firsthand that if a college kid comes in and establishes permanent 
residency that they would be able to vote.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank 
the distinguished gentleman from the great State of Ohio for coming 
forward, along with his caucus, for a very excellent presentation.
  Let me just quickly say, you could not be more right, and this could 
not be a more vital and timely effort on behalf of college students 
around the Nation.

[[Page H5901]]

  I am going to put on a lawyer's hat just for a little bit. That case 
came out of Prairie View A&M, Prairie View, Texas, and believe it or 
not, just a few short months ago, we had to march with 7,000 students 
and community leaders to make the very point again, because the 
students in Prairie View, Texas, were being denied the right to vote by 
the district attorney of that county.
  We had to then solicit the assistance of the Secretary of State, the 
Department of Justice, and the governor of the State of Texas to 
pronounce the rights of those students, and thereby, the rights of 
students in Denton, Texas, and those in Corpus and those in San 
Antonio, maybe in Columbus, Ohio; New York City, to have the right to 
vote, register to vote in your place of residence.
  I do not like the term ``permanent residence,'' and the reason why I 
do not like that is because it suggests an onerous burden that is not 
true. If you declare that you are a resident of that community, for 
that framework, that you are not voting in another location, meaning 
that you have left the residency of your parents or wherever you live 
and you have taken up residence, because the distinguished gentleman, 
someone may move from where they graduate from school and become a 
resident of New York, but as long as they are not voting in New York 
and Texas then they have taken up residency in New York.

                              {time}  2320

  And they have the right to vote.
  This is an election year of the greatest moment, if you will. And 
that means that we are trying to encourage our young people to 
participate in the democratic process of elections. And what happened 
in Prairie View, Texas, in this year on the date of the birthday of 
Martin Luther King, which was the date of that particular decision, 
January 15, 1979, was the reason we had to march again January 15, 
2004, to declare the rights of those young people to be able to vote.
  So I think that the gentleman's plea today, the gentleman's request 
today is paramount. And all of the Secretaries of State, and it may be 
the Secretary of State in one State, it may be the Attorney General or 
it may be the Governor. But what the gentleman is suggesting is that 
there has to be the pronouncement that if you have taken up residence, 
if you have an address, if you have left the residency of your past 
location, family, etc., if you are not voting in two places, which none 
of us are arguing for. Then you have the right to vote.
  Mr. Speaker, I will close on this. Intimidation is real. It has 
occurred. I am a living witness to listening to students who were 
intimidated from not only voting but even registering. There is a 
suggestion that in towns where you might think there is conflict 
between town and gown that this creates an agitation. I believe if we 
create an atmosphere that eliminates intimidation, we will find that 
our students on college campuses will be the best community citizens in 
various parts of communities that we could ever find.
  These are young people who are vital, they are vibrant, and they 
simply want to participate. Many of them are volunteers, many of them 
participate in helping in humanitarian efforts in the community. They 
are good community citizens.
  I would simply argue that the gentleman has an excellent point that 
is being made, and I want to thank the gentleman on behalf of the 
students of Prairie View A&M, because the gentleman is using them 
symbolically for the troubles we had in Texas that we had to fix, not 
by a simple request. And since many of us were physically meeting with 
that district attorney, it was not just a simple request.
  We thanked that district attorney's office for conceding getting an 
opinion from the Attorney General and from the Secretary of State and 
from the Governor of the State of Texas. Because I can assure my 
colleague that no one would want to have every single college town have 
to have a march of 7,000 people to get their votes.
  So I hope what the gentleman has offered today will be heard by many 
of our colleagues, and that we will check on our college campuses, 
check on our students and ensure that our election officials are very 
much aware of this very worthy decision and the gentleman's great 
leadership on this issue.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Texas for 
sharing her personal experience with us. It was obviously just 
something that had to be done.
  Let me share so there is no confusion here. The case we were just 
talking about, the local district attorney threatened to prosecute 
students for fraud if they voted. I already mentioned this school in 
Arkansas.
  At Florida A&M, during the 2000 general election, 5,000 students were 
turned away from polling locations at the Historically Black 
University. Students have also reported receiving two voter 
registration cards with different polling locations. Others were turned 
away and told to vote at off-campus polling sites, while more students 
were informed that they had never been registered.
  In Maine, the same kind of situation. The town registrar of 
Brunswick, Maine, turned students away from the polls by using 
misleading questions regarding residency. Students were informed if 
they registered in the county of their college or university, now 
listen to this, that they would risk losing financial aid, health care, 
driver's license and/or car registration. The students began 
campaigning and eventually protested. They gained national media 
coverage, defeated the legislation with a unanimous vote because they 
tried to manipulate the legislative process there.
  So this is really happening. It is happening in Maine, Arkansas, 
Texas; and it is probably happening all over the country. Send us an e-
mail, let us know, contact your local Secretary of State or whoever in 
your State is in charge of the voting. This is a very important issue.
  We are not saying we want anybody to be able, as the gentlewoman from 
Texas said, to be able to vote in a couple of different places; but 
these are students. They have the right to vote. They qualify and they 
should be able to participate in the political process.
  So that wraps it up for the 30-Something 20 minutes this week, Mr. 
Speaker.

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