Bob McDonnell outlines solutions for college voting

Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s attorney general and the likely Republican candidate for governor next year, proposed several solutions for election problems Tuesday, and said college students should follow the honor system when registering to vote.

McDonnell also wants to allow voters to wear T-shirts and campaign buttons that promote their favorite candidate when they enter polling places.

He also outlined six other measures he’s proposing for “better elections with less hassle for the voters and more clarity in the law.”

McDonnell’s proposals include new assurances that registrars will mail absentee ballots in a timely manner to ensure they will be counted, and that new polling places be created to cut down waiting times for voters.

Registrars throughout Virginia were confused this fall about whether students, particularly those who live in dormitories, were eligible to register in their college communities for November’s presidential election.

McDonnell said he would propose legislation to require the State Board of Elections to issue better guidelines to help local registrars determine a voter’s residence.

McDonnell said he wanted the law to clarify a difference between “place of abode” and a person’s place of “domicile.”

A domicile likely would be the place where someone intends to continue living for a while, as defined in rulings by the Supreme Court of Virginia.

“That really goes back to the honor system,” McDonnell said, with people being truthful about their intention to remain in a community when they apply to register. “It would still be up to the voter to give accurate information,” he said.

McDonnell indicated the legislation wouldn’t focus on colleges specifically.

“I haven’t looked at college dormitories in detail,” he said. “They might fit the definition of a place of abode. I think the stickier question is the domicile issue. You’ve got to have both” a place to stay and an intention to remain there, he said.

Registrars in some college cities and towns, including Radford and Blacksburg, designed their own questionnaires or instructions for students this year. But in Lynchburg, students’ applications to vote were accepted the same as everyone else’s.

Those differences illustrate a need for clearer guidelines from the state, McDonnell said.

Liberty University rounded up 4,200 applications, and many Lynchburg College students also applied, Registrar Patricia Bower has said.

The Democratic Party of Virginia questioned “McDonnell’s sudden commitment to election reform,” and said he opposed the federal motor-voter bill while he was a member of the General Assembly in the 1990s.

Some of McDonnell’s proposed changes could already be in effect, the Democrats said, but Republicans have supported the campaign-apparel prohibition as well as another new McDonnell proposal to allow emergency first-responders to vote early.