I wrote this diary this morning, before I posted it, I found this had been diaried this morning by a gnostic, I rec'd, but it slid off the radar screen. This is important, so I'm going to post my original.
I was reading the News & Observer this morning, a NC paper, it printed an article about problems in the swing state of Virginia, and some dirty tricks some local voters Registars offices are pulling on Virginia's college students. Basically, they are trying to scare college students away from registering and voting.
I wanted to put this out there so that the college students could get the straight scoop on registering and voting. First here are some excerpts.
Here is a link to the full article.
http://www.newsobserver.com/...
Late last month, as a voter-registration drive by supporters of Sen. Barack Obama was signing up thousands of students at Virginia Tech, the local registrar of elections issued two news releases incorrectly suggesting a range of dire possibilities for students who registered to vote at their college.
The releases warned that such students could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents' tax returns -- a statement the Internal Revenue Service says is incorrect -- and could lose scholarships or coverage under their parents' car and health insurance. After some inquiries from students and parents, and more pointed questions from civil rights lawyers, the state Board of Elections said Friday that it was "modifying and clarifying" the state guidelines on which the county registrar had based his releases.
So, local dirty tricks are trying to scare off potential Obama voters by disseminating false information designed to make college kids think that they will no longer be a dependent, will loose scholarship money, the right to be listed on their parents health and car insurance policies. This information is totally FALSE. Here is the the most salient paragraph in the article:
Jahagirdar said Virginia's warnings were profoundly misleading. "We have been registering young voters for 25 years," she said. "We registered 500,000 young voters in 2004, the majority on college campuses, and we've never heard of a single one who lost health insurance, scholarship or tax status because of where they registered to vote."
The article also reminded everyone that a Supreme Court ruling in 1979 gave College students the right to register to vote at their college campuses. Parents had started calling the registrars office to clarify this information and the office backpedalled and issued a much less dire directive. The new information was designed to be more vague, but still had the intent of discouraging young voters at college by asking questions about being a dependent on their parents tax returns, and then stating, if you are, Their address is probably your legal residence. Can you beat that... probably.
This misleading information is hogwash folks. Lets be clear:
*You have a legal right to register to vote at your college campus and vote in the state that you attend college in.
*If you register to vote at your college, you can still be claimed as a dependent on you parents tax return, be put on your parents car insurance and health insurance policies.
*If you register to vote at your college, You will NOT loose your scholarship money. Your scholarship money has nothing whatsoever to do with voting.
Know your rights. If you see false information being pushed at your campus, contact the agency and person that issued it, they will backtrack. Don't fall for the scam. At this specific voter registrars office, they blamed the misleading information on an intern!
Go get 'em guys.