My son voted every year he was at Bates. He had a NYS drivers license until just a few weeks ago and he’s been living in MA since June 2015. The car he drove in Maine while a student was owned by me and registered in NYS where I live.
We had to sell it to him (for $1) when he moved to Boston as car had to be registered in MA to get a Boston resident parking permit.
Which means he failed to comply with Maine law. Don’t tell Paul LePage!
(I assume you mean he voted a Maine ballot.)
Students do not have to change their drivers licenses.
“There is nothing in Maine law that states that college students must change their driver’s licenses in order to vote. In fact, the Secretary of State’s office has made explicitly clear that a dorm can be a student’s legal voting residence, and that paying out-of-state tuition does not preclude a student from voting,” he said."
If they were residents they would get instate tuition at the public universities in Maine, but they do not. The are only considered residents for the purpose of voting.
Haha @doschicos ! Yes, deplorable indeed:-)
Right, they don’t have to change their driver’s licenses in order to be able to vote. They have to change their driver’s licenses because they have now declared themselves to be residents of Maine. Go back to my other post and read about the two step process.
Wrong; residency requirements for instate tuition purposes is a completely separate thing. Try moving to California on Monday and getting a California license and car registration and then telling the University of California system on Tuesday that you now want instate status for tuition purposes. Good luck with that. But you will be able to vote in California! (Applies to pretty much every other state as well.) There is no such thing as “residency for the purpose of voting only.”
I guess I’m failing to understand the incentive for students to register to vote based on where they go to college vs. their parents’ residence. Per MD state voter requirements (where D attends school):
They go on to say you should register at the address you use for tax returns, driver’s license, bank accounts, and so on. I suppose there are students who know they plan to stay where they attend college, but I’m sure there are may who have no idea what their plans will be. For my kids, it seemed easier to keep their “official” residences as our house until they settle somewhere (D is now looking at Master’s and PhD programs, so may move around a lot).
Absentee voting was not any significant challenge. Seemed like it was pretty common among out-of-state students at both my kid’s colleges.
Mine voted in Maine, too. D1 campaigned for Libby Mitchell, who lost to Le Page.
Regardless of what some would like to see changed, state law allows it. Part of the .gov includes: “You can establish a voting residence at your Maine school address if you have a present intention to remain at that address for the time being, whether that residence is a dorm, apartment, house or even a hotel.” The rest is very simple, rather circular. You don’t have to have a DL, it’s just one of several ways you can prove residence.
This is from the Maine Secretary of State’s voter information website:
*Consequences of Declaring Your Voting Residence (by Registering to Vote) in Maine
You should be aware that if you register to vote in Maine, you will be deemed to have declared residency in Maine, which may have consequences for compliance with other Maine laws, including the motor vehicle laws and tax laws. If you drive a car in Maine, you are required to obtain a Maine driver’s license within thirty days of establishing residency here. Driving without a Maine license more than ninety days after you have established residency in the state is a crime under Maine law. If you are a resident of Maine and own a vehicle here, state law also requires you to register that vehicle in Maine within thirty days of establishing residency. By declaring Maine as your voting residence, you may be treated as a resident of Maine for income tax purposes and be subject to Maine income tax.*
http://www.state.me.us/sos/cec/elec/voter-info/resident.html (this is the same URL that was included on the fliers distributed on the Bates campus)
I do get why a student would do that. If you are going to spend four years somewhere, you might become invested in the community.
Here’s what the Maine Voting Residence Fact Sheet says:
However, what the flyer said was that if you register to vote in Maine you must change your driver’s license and re-register any vehicle you have in Lewiston.
http://bangordailynews.com/2016/11/07/politics/fake-fliers-passed-out-at-bates-college-in-apparent-voter-suppression-effort-2/
Both of these points are at least in part factually incorrect.
1.Only someone who plans to drive in Maine needs to change their driver’s license. Lots of students have licenses from their parents’ state of residence as ID but don’t have cars on campus.
2. Only a car owned by the person registered to vote in Maine needs to be registered with the DMV in Maine. Many students (mine included) drive cars owned by their parents.
This was a clear case of voter intimidation. The flyer stressed how expensive it is to change your license and car registration and specifically referred to Lewiston, where Bates is located. I hope they catch the jerk who put these flyers up.
Also, in answer to the out of state tuition question as it applies specifically to Maine,
Many hundreds of OOS students with OOS drivers licenses are going to vote tomorrow in Maine.
They will vote in next year’s election, too.
And the year after that.
And the year after that.
Yes, BP, but scroll down to the section for students.
Maybe some of us will just disagree, but my older vetted it, as I had the same original basic concerns. And for the most part, they didn’t drive except campus Zip cars.
No one is saying that college students don’t have the right to vote in the state where they go to school; that issue has long been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. And no, you don’t have to have a driver’s license to vote in Maine. (Thankfully, Maine has no voter ID law. LePage and his cronies tried to implement one, but it was overturned by a people’s veto, along with their attempt to do away with same day voter registration.) But if you do need a driver’s license (you know, because you will be driving a motor vehicle on a public road), it must be a Maine license once you have become a Maine resident by voting in a Maine election.
You are right, of course. And if those same students drive in Maine on a non-Maine driver’s license after the statutory period of time has elapsed, they will be breaking the law. Chances of being caught for this infraction: close to zero.
And? That section mentions no student exemption from the driver’s license/vehicle registration requirement that every other legal resident of Maine is bound by.
4 years is longer than I have lived in many places… and lots of students end up staying near their college.
Yes, the policies in the place I’m living for 4 years affect me more than those at my parents’ place. JMO
(Speaking, of course, for when I was an undergrad)
I find it interesting that many people think it is no problem to avoid getting a Maine driver’s license when the law requires it, but are just fine throwing the people printing the fliers into jail.
Thoroughly unconscionable. Voter suppression is profoundly un-American and anti-democratic. Vile from start to finish.
"Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said registering to vote in Maine sets an “expectation that you obtain a Maine driver’s license and do other public business as a Maine resident.
“However, whether an individual obtains a Maine driver’s license or not has no impact on your ability to exercise your right to vote,” said Dunlap in a written statement. “There is no statutory connectivity between motor vehicle law and election law, and no one should be deterred from voting because of other aspects of residency found in other titles of Maine law.”
But the point of this thread was false info abut voting.
Yup, I agree with Matt on all of this, except I would say that it’s more than an “expectation” that one obtain a Maine driver’s license; it’s a requirement of the law. Of course, Matt is positioning himself at the opposite end of the spectrum from LePage et. al.
The flip side to the voter suppression/intimidation fliers that showed up on the Bates campus is the push to register new out-of-state students as soon as they step foot on the campus, without adequately informing these students of their obligations should they decide to register to vote in Maine and therefore become legal residents of Maine.