Vote at home: What home?

Written in response to an editorial from 9/15/16

Andrew Shue, Special to the Crier

For the past seven years my family has been deployed overseas with the United States Foreign Service protecting Diplomatic personnel and advancing US interests while educating foreign nationals of our history and traditions. Recently a Crier article urged students not from New Hampshire to vote elsewhere. Does this mean I, someone who is not eligible to vote in any other state, should go find somewhere else to vote? I was not born in New Hampshire, so this is technically not my home.

Many students who attend Saint Anselm College are not from New Hampshire, yet we call this state our home- and the College advertises St. A’s as ‘your home’ to incoming freshmen. The idea someone should go vote in their ‘home’ is ridiculous. The idea is furthermore not democratic, nor does it stand up to legal scrutiny.

By law in the State of New Hampshire, “any student living in New Hampshire [has] the right to vote here” (RSA 654.1(I-a)) That’s something hard to argue with when the law was passed by New Hampshire legislature. Telling someone they can’t vote somewhere when it’s legal is attempting to restrict their legal right to vote, and I would argue such a statement could be considered voter intimidation; something that should simply not be tolerated anywhere in the United States.

As students at Saint Anselm, we are not only students of the liberal arts, but also students of where we live and the local politics of the state. What if we continue to live in New Hampshire? Should we still vote at ‘home’?

What qualifies someone as a resident of a state and when they are allowed to vote somewhere? It seems to me that New Hampshire state law is pretty clear about who is allowed to vote in New Hampshire, so don’t tell someone to go elsewhere.

If we took this argument to another state, would students still have to vote at ‘home’? No, in Massachusetts if you are a student at a school in-state, but not from that state originally, you have the legal right to vote in Massachusetts (as long as you follow the proper registration procedure.)

More importantly, we are all Americans, all of the United States is fair game, and it is for us to share. No citizen has exclusive rights to any state and I’m pretty sure no one intends to ‘devalue’ anyone’s vote. You simply cannot prevent someone from voting somewhere and you simply cannot act like a state is your own personal territory- each state is collectively part of the United States, of which most of us are citizens.

Lastly, how would you feel if you had to move somewhere else and someone said you couldn’t vote there? This fall, vote where you want to, where you don’t need to drive or fly ‘home;’ vote here in New Hampshire, at your home, Saint Anselm College, and help decide the future of a state that everyone at Saint Anselm comes to love.