<p>What disadvantages are there for a student who wants to register to vote at college? It would mean establishing his residence legally in the state in which he is going to school rather than the state in which his parents live, so I suppose he could no longer be put on our car insurance policy, or could he? I really don’t know. Are there other considerations? </p>
<p>This just came up because our son wants to register to vote locally in New Orleans. We are in NC. Does anyone know of any reason he should not? (For us, it’s not relevant to tuition, as he is attending a private university.)</p>
<p>Your son has a few option. He can register in your home state or he can register to vote in N.O.</p>
<p>My Daughter does vote in NH when she is away at school.</p>
<p>New Hampshire law permits a qualified voter who is a college student to vote by mail, using an absentee ballot, at the town/city where the student was domiciled in New Hampshire prior to moving to attend college, provided the student will be absent from that home town on election day. Students attending college in New Hampshire from other states may also have the right to vote by absentee ballot at their home town in their home state.</p>
<p>Most schools have voter registration drives and will explain the process on how to vote in their state. </p>
<p>In Hanover, it involves going to the Office of Residential Life and getting a special memo. Then the student takes it to the town clerk’s office or the polling place. becasuse the schooll has large voter registration drives, everyone is together in the same place - students, town officials and residential life personnel so it is one stop shopping.</p>
<p>Students simply showed College IDs at the registration table. A staff member looked up their residential-life records on a computer to verify their New Hampshire residence, and a supervisor from the Hanover voter checklist approved their forms.</p>
<p>Massachusetts allows college students to vote locally. There’s not a “residency” requirement. Although my son is registered to vote here he cannot vote absentee due to some weird state requirements. So he has registered to vote at college. </p>
<p>The League of Women Voters in each state probably has information about voting laws online.</p>
<p>My S registered to vote in Illinois prior to the 2004 election, but now he has been called to jury duty in Cook County…A very large county and he has no car. That’s something to consider if you register too vote where you go to school. He has to get a deferral or risk being seated on a jury the week before finals.</p>
<p>We encouraged our daughter to register here in PA prior to the Presidential election because we knew we were a swing state and her vote would carry more weight. She goes to college in IL. She voted by absentee ballot. I remember there was something in the papers around the Presidential election about both parties trying to get oos college students to register in PA.</p>
<p>My daughter registered in the state she was going to school at for the presidential election last year and intended to switch back to our state as an absentee voter. But in the interim she was summoned here to jury duty (based on her drivers license) and the only proof they will accept that she is mostly in another state (because she may not even be here during the summer) is a utility bill or proof of voter registration (and she has no utility bill). So for now I think she’ll stay registered in that state because in our state they don’t really care where you are or what you are doing when they summon you – they give you one postponement and then you are on their schedule. My older son was summoned and when he went in he said, “I am in finals all next week.” and nobody cared. Fortunately he was one away from being an alternate but if they had selected him he would have had a real problem. Of course this kind of thing varies from state to state. The downside is that she missed out on voting on the “special elections” are state likes to routinely have. It has not been an issue with insurance.</p>
<p>Circumstances may vary. I’ve counseled my D <em>not</em> to register to vote where she goes to college as part of maintaining her California citizenship, which could become economically useful if she goes to law/graduate school back here. Both states are equally Blue, so that’s a push. If she were going to college in a Swing State, I might waver. Might? Yeah.</p>
<p>We are also from California. Will she lose her residency by voting in CT? She maintains her drivers license through CA and worked in CA last summer. We were told that in order to be waived from jury duty she needed to demonstrate she lives in another state. However, we were also told if we sent the summons back unopened and put not at this address that would suffice – except they kept mailing her. How long can you vote in another state and not lose residency? It is almost impossible to get any kind of answer on jury duty issues – they number they print on their literature is one of those numbers that is endless voicemail that does not lead to the option of talking to a person. Then when you call the courts, etc. you just get the opinion of whomever you are speaking with.</p>
<p>Here is some interesting info about establishing CA residency as a student – or proving you are a resident if you left for school. Also, you are eligible for an exemption from a non-resident tuition fee if you attended a CA high school for three years and graduated from that school. This same info is available on most CA university websites under residency although each UC has it’s own regulations – I got this from UC Irvine. Obviously, I imagine this varies from state to state. According to the CA State Franchise Board you are stil a resident if you left for a temporary or “transitory” purpose. </p>
<p>Establishing Intent to become a California Resident Last Updated: Apr 12, 2000, 3:54 PM PDT </p>
<p>Relevant indicia that contribute to the demonstration of a student’s intent to make California the permanent home include, but are not limited to the following: registering to vote and voting in California elections, designating a California permanent add ress on all records (for example, school, employment, military), a California Driver’s License, a California Identification Card, California vehicle registration, paying California income taxes as a resident (including taxes on income earned outside California from the date California residence was established), maintaining a California residence in which personal belongings are kept, licensing for professional practice in California, and the absence of these indicia in places other than California during any period for which residence in California is asserted.</p>
<p>Students can’t register to vote at their school location in MI – they have to vote at their parents’ home. This was engineered by a certain GOP leader (now a Congressman) who wanted to be sure his district was “safe.”</p>
<p>Oddly enough, the U.S. Census defines students’ place of residence as where they attend school, not their home town. So we have contradictory standards for voting and the census.</p>