Home is where the vote is. And though not all college students think of their colleges as home, we do spend about nine months of the year at school—more than enough time to become part of the surrounding area’s civic life. But in the last few days, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, has ignored this reality by telling out-of-state college students who go to school in Iowa that they shouldn’t vote in the state’s primary caucuses.
Student voting is a complicated issue at Georgetown. Many politically active students don’t register to vote in D.C. because the District lacks federal representation, and they value being heard on a national level. The Voice recently advocated that students vote in their home primary elections. But in states where federal and local elections are available, students have the right to participate fully.
The senator responded to a statement by her rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.), that called for out-of-state Iowa students to caucus, with an unfortunate rebuttal: “We are not courting out-of-staters. The Iowa caucus ought to be for Iowans … This needs to be all about Iowa, and people who live here, people who pay taxes here.” But students who spend an overwhelming majority of their four-year college career in Iowa are Iowans, at least for political purposes, and they pay Iowa’s sales tax. Some students with jobs in Iowa even pay state income tax. Clinton’s attempts to keep students out of caucuses are even more unfair in light of her own past as a carpetbagging New York senate candidate. Clinton’s attempt to take potshots at a rival has caught young people in the crossfire.
Despite being a constituency maligned as apathetic and unreliable, voting rates among people ages 18-29 have been rising for the past three years. It is legal under Iowa law for students to vote in their college towns; it’s foolish of Clinton to try to imply otherwise, and she ought to realize that. Our advice for Georgetown students is to remember which candidate values student opinion and participation when they go to the polls. You are planning to vote somewhere, right?
