Thousands of MSU students will have their first opportunity to vote in the city council election on Nov. 4 and 2004 presidential elections next year, but almost all students voting will be forced to change permanent addresses or vote in their hometown.
Student leaders say getting students registered each year is a never-ending battle as the make-up of students changes every four years - with Michigan law requiring residents to have the same address on both voter registration cards and driver's licenses.
Education sophomore Andrea Fuller already has changed her address from Cadillac to East Lansing and back to Cadillac and doesn't plan to vote or go through the hassle of changing her address again.
"I just don't want my permanent address changed to my dorm room," Fuller said.
The national Motor Voter statute, passed by Congress in 1993, required states to adopt laws to change their voter registration procedures and allows public institutions to register voters instead of only local clerks.
The change also required states to maintain a Qualified Voter File to keep track of registered voters in order to clean up outdated lists and avoid multiple registrations.
"It poses a huge hurdle for students," said Andrew Bell, director of legislative affairs for ASMSU, MSU's undergraduate student government. "Who wants to go home on a Tuesday and have to miss class?"
First-time voters must go to their voting precinct and cannot send out absentee ballots until their second election, he said.
"The problem is, it's disenfranchised a huge amount of students," Bell said.
City Clerk Sharon Reid said residents who change their address can keep their permanent address as a mailing address. Programs such as YouVote, a project designed to help students vote by actively campaigning, registered 3,172 students through a collaborative effort of the MSU Service-Learning Center, the city and ASMSU.
Michigan's Motor Voter bill was introduced in the Senate by then-state Sen. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, in 1998 and approved 37-1 but was never looked at by the House. In 1999, Rogers re-introduced a similar bill as he was running for a U.S. Representative seat that turned the issue political, Rogers' spokeswoman Sylvia Warner said.
Many MSU students didn't know about the change and were turned away at voting locations, The State News reported.
The 2000 presidential election brought out 50.5 percent of the 31,389 registered voters. The 18- to 21-year-olds had 61.6 percent of the 7,481 people registered compared to 22- to 30-year-olds who had 24.7 percent of 12,468 registered voters. Reid said the 22- to 30-year-old category can be misleading because many MSU students are still registered but have graduated and moved.
The last city council election in 2001, when Vic Loomis and Bill Sharp were elected to the council, saw participation of 15.1 percent or 3,995 of registered voters. Residents from 18 to 21 years old had 2.8 percent vote of the 5,013 registered voters, compared to 158 22- to 30-year-olds voting of the 9,951 registered or 1.59 percent.
On the Nov. 4 election, incumbent Mayor Mark Meadows, Mayor Pro Tem Sam Singh and East Lansing City Councilmember Beverly Baten will be the only candidates on the ballot.
But registered students such as AJ Kleinheksel, a social relations and religious studies senior, will vote.
"It's not a hassle," Kleinheksel said. "I think it's very important that wherever you move to that you become an active member of that community and become registered to vote in that community."
Esther Gim contributed to this report.
