Assembly moves closer to making voter registration more student-friendly

RICHMOND — A House of Delegates subcommittee approved two Senate bills Tuesday that would make it easier for students to register to vote, signaling that problems in some college towns may be cleared up by this year’s General Assembly session.

Students would be eligible to register at their school addresses under bills sponsored by Sen. John Ed-wards, D-Roanoke, and Sen. Harry Blevins, R-Chesapeake. A subcommittee of the House Privileges and Elections Committee on Tuesday recommended reporting the bills to the House floor.

Blevins’ SB 1188 already had passed the Senate on a 37-3 vote, and it is nearly identical to a bill passed earlier in the House of Delegates with a 99-0 approval. The House version of the student-voting measure, sponsored by Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, is awaiting action in a Senate committee.

The bills direct the State Board of Elections to establish clear guidelines for local registrars to use in registering people to vote.

While the bills don’t mention college students specifically, they make it clear that the standard for de-termining a persons’ place of residence depends on whether they intend to remain in the community for an indefinite period.

The measures would remove from current state law a reference to “residence of parents” and another item involving where a person’s car is registered.

A person who votes in more than one community would be guilty of a felony, the bills say.

Nothing in the bills appears likely to change anything about the way voter registration was handled in Lynchburg for last fall’s presidential election, although heavy registration required many volunteer helpers in the registrar’s office.

Much of that workload came from 4,200 applications to register that were submitted from Liberty University.