No, this is about how few people acknowledge that, for many students, it actually takes a little more than simply being registered and having a desire to vote. A quirk of Michigan law means that many students who thought they were on top of things could find themselves on the outside looking in come election day.

Michigan currently has a law on the books requiring a voter’s registration to be tied to the address on his or her driver’s license. When you update your legal address on your driver’s license, your voter’s registration is updated and vice versa. It’s colloquially known as Rogers’ Law, after state congressman Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, a major proponent of the measure.

Rogers’ Law has a major impact on students simply because so few of us actually update our legal address on our driver’s license to accurately reflect where we’re currently residing. In many ways, a student is a four- or five-year nomad, shuffling between multiple addresses, but not staying in any one long enough to justify the long wait and paperwork that awaits an address change at the Secretary of State offices.

Even though I’ve lived at the same address for a couple of years now, I haven’t bothered to update my address, just because I keep wondering exactly how long I’ll be staying there, even as I keep renewing my lease.

All of which brings me to my point: The absentee ballot. I’m sure there are quite a few students who’ll need one who don’t realize the time has already come to request one.

I came to this conclusion after this past weekend, when I went to visit my family in my hometown and found my self-described “idiot” of a sister. She didn’t realize she needed an absentee ballot. After I had announced I needed to go to the city clerk’s office to grab an application for an absentee ballot, my sister suddenly perked up. It had been a while since she had voted — while she has many virtues, political aptitude is not one of them — and she wasn’t even sure if she was registered.

Panic gripped her as she envisioned large piles of paperwork to fill out and possibly even some form of government interrogation. As an experienced absentee voter, I did my best to quell her fears.

I knew it would be a simple matter of finding the city clerk’s office and filling out some paperwork, but she was having none of it. It was fairly amusing. Once we actually reached the clerk’s office and grabbed two applications for ballots, I figured that she’d calm down.

How little I know her, it seems.

The form simply asks for your birthday, name, current legal address, a temporary address to send the ballot to if needed, the dates you’ll be at the temporary address, a reason for the ballot request and a check box for which ballot — primary, general election or both — you’ll be needing.

I wouldn’t have believed a person could think there were right or wrong answers to this form, but there was my loving sister, begging to look at my form and inundating me with requests for the answers.

That was problem enough, but then came the check boxes for reasons for the ballot request.

This section enchanted her. While I calmly looked for the box stating that I would not be in the polling area the entirety of election day, my sister saw it as an opportunity to impress some poor government worker.

I tried to point out the box she should check, but I found that it took some cajoling to get her to not check the box indicating that she could not attend for religious reasons. Now, I’m sure she was playing around with me a bit. It still makes me wonder how she could find a government form so interesting.

So let this rambling story be a reminder to those other nomadic students that it’s time to get your requests in, if you haven’t already. I highly doubt your trip will be quite as entertaining as mine, but it’s still something you need to do.

You have until the Nov. 1, to request an absentee ballot. If you’ve already requested one, they will be mailed Monday.

As a final note, to my sister: Just remember, you’re the one who told me to call you an idiot.

James Harrison is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at harri310@msu.edu.