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Follow us on TwitterLiberty delivers votes by the busload
Photo by Jill Nance/The News & Advance
Liberty University campus pastor Johnnie Moore high-fives students voting at Heritage Elementary School on Tuesday.
Liberty senior Caleb Mast, chairman of the College Republican club at Liberty University, worked past 4 a.m. Tuesday putting up campaign signs on campus and at Heritage Elementary School.
He returned to Heritage — the voting site for on-campus Liberty students — by 6:45 a.m. to greet student voters arriving by the busload.
As many as 3,200 LU students were eligible to vote. Mast said he kept an unofficial tally at Heritage and counted upwards of 800 student voters when he left at 5 p.m. More than 2,300 votes were cast at the precinct altogether.
To encourage a high turnout, Liberty cancelled classes and ran buses between the campus and the voting precinct every few minutes. The school did not keep track of how many students went to the polls, said Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr.
The precinct reached its peak crowd just past noon. House of Delegates candidates Shannon Valentine and Scott Garrett shook hands with voters, while Falwell, who voted that morning in Bedford County, greeted students.
“I need to get me a dorm room on campus so I can vote in the city,” Falwell said jokingly, and then struck a serious note on why he encouraged students to vote.
“I told the students yesterday the turnout is more important than who wins or loses,” he said.
“It makes the city take seriously issues that impact the students.”
Liberty’s first concerted voter registration drive took place last fall, when about 4,000 students registered to vote in the presidential election. This fall, as many as 1,700 additional students registered.
Liberty’s initiative to bring students to the polls has elicited mixed reactions from city residents. Falwell responded to criticism by saying many college students across the country vote where they go to school, rather than in their hometowns.
“The decisions made by local politicians have more impact (on the students) in cities where they attend school than it does in the municipalities where their parents live,” he said.
Walter Fore and other Democratic Party volunteers handed out sample ballots that suggested people should vote for Democrats.
“I want to let people know Democrats vote here, too,“ Fore said. “This is not a precinct for Liberty students only.”
The university’s presence was visible throughout the day.
Around 11 a.m., members from Liberty’s College Republican club pulled up to Heritage in a white pickup truck, waving American flags. The bed of the truck carried a jumbo elephant made of chicken wire and duct tape and covered with Republican bumper stickers.
For some students, Election Day meant a chance to sleep in, catch up on homework or enjoy the crisp autumn weather.
Sophomore Allison Braun said she planned to spend her day catching up on homework and taking advantage of open dorms — a rare event when the single-sex dormitories are open to the opposite gender.
“That’s like one of the highlights of the semester,” Braun said of open dorms.
Braun said voting was a civic duty.
“As Liberty students, it’s really important to vote locally because it affects us all year long,” she said.
LU student Eddie Brown of Texas registered for last year’s presidential election, and Tiffany Orne of Williamsburg registered just before the fall deadline.
For Brown, the vote came down to fiscal conservatism and for Orne, it was social issues. Both voted to have a voice in local government.
“Since I do live here and plan on being her possible for graduate school and past that, it’s important for my voice to be heard,” Brown said.
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Reader Reactions
With Jim Gilmore’s car tax relief, wouldn’t LU students save money if they registered their cars in Virginia?
pdpixel-
“There is NOTHING unchristian about a University working with its host city to help create a climate of job growth. Which is what I was suggesting.“
Something we both agree on. I, as obviously you do, hope that LU’s growth results in a growing economy- beyond the service and hospitality sectors that seem to be thriving. Areva obviously feels that LU is worth pursuing at some level, based on some investments/contributions to the institution.
Reality Check
I did some basic research before posting my last comment. to Jmajor
You must not have read it, or completely misunderstood it, or are simply ignoring what it, and I said.
The fact that non-resident students can vote in local elections is a result of the loosening up of registration restrictions. This applies to those other area’s you mention as well. I don’t like it that non-resident UVA students vote in that district either. It totally throws the idea of actual representative government on its head. Mr Fallwell and LU gets 1000 votes. I get 1. Its like having an institution or a company with a super-vote.
Non resident students would not have been able or allowed to vote here in the local elections of 2006. This is a new phenomenon. If the election registration rules had not been changed we wouldn’t be having this discussion, and Valentine would still have her seat.
Also NONE of those other colleges put into action a plan to organize students to vote en-mass for specific candidates, or issues. LU is unique in this regard. Its a conflict of interest that probably borders very close to the edge of being legal.
In the towns you mentioned. The Universities have a larger impact, because they are much larger in ratio to the community. I don’t know what the ratio is, but I’d bet 1/3 to 1/2 of jobs in Charlottesville are directly tied to the University. Direct wages paid. LU is pretty good sized, but Lynchburg is about twice the size of Cville, and LU is about 1/3rd the size of UVA. Most college populations are more liberal than the rest of the population in general. So in small cities with a large university, sure.. they’re going to be more liberal and the university is going to a have larger impact on the overall culture.
In a city the size of say Richmond, the universities and colleges have much less of an impact on the ideological makeup of the community.
All said
Non-residents are still NOT allowed to vote here. You must vote in the district of your legal residence. The fact that many students elected to declare Lynchburg as their legal residence is OK in so far as this is their actual residence. If you’re driving a car with out of state plates, your parents claim you as a dependent in a different district or a host of other restrictions.. YOU’RE BREAKING THE LAW. You’ve voted in a district you’re not allowed to vote in. This is just as wrong as any of the worst things ACORN was involved in. (and they largely deserve the slamming they are getting).
Just because someone is not verifying your registration, and it slides by, does not make it acceptable.
And to stop a rant in advance, I also realize that a lot of the students at LU are “townies”. Its complete appropriate for them to vote here.
Many of the LU students want it both ways. You want to vote here, but aren’t willing to even pay the minimal car, and property taxes required to qualify you as an actual resident.
For the college to knowingly enlist non-resident students to help skew the vote in a local election is just plain unethical at the least. So much for championing ethical values and standards. Its win at any cost.
Lynchburg has always been a conservative place. I LIKE THIS. I’m a person of mixed views. I’m socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. What I don’t want to see happen here is for one faction of the community to be able to dictate what the entire cities policies are going to be and how we are represented in Richmond. Valentine was a good legislator with a good record. Its a shame she lost her seat over theological gerrymandering.
pdpixel, you need to do some research on how large colleges have impacted college towns where they are located. Start with Berkeley, CA, Ann Arbor, MI, and Charlottesville, VA. All of these communities have learned that the benefits these colleges bring to their economies far outweigh the political impact of student voters. You seem to want taxation without representation. King George would be proud of you.
@Whollottashakin,
I think perhaps Mr Fallwell would like to run Lynchburg. He spends plenty of time and money on making sure people are in positions within the city government that are sympathetic to his interests.
There is NOTHING unchristian about a University working with its host city to help create a climate of job growth. Which is what I was suggesting.
JMajor, Yes the student population ratio at CU and UVA is higher, but the students aren’t organized by the UNIVERSITY in those places to get out and vote en-mass.
Also keep in mind that the University does receive both federal and some state funding. So its a conflict of interest at minimum.
The problem exists because the registration rules were changed. For instance when we registered here 4-5 years back. I had to show a drivers license with my actual address, my birth certificate, a utility bill, and either a lease or a copy of a mortgage statement. What did you have to show?
Anytime you throw a voting block of 1000+ people at a delegate seat for a state election. Its going to have a huge impact. So no, its not easier to overcome. The group that showed up to vote at Heritage High constituted 2/3’rds or more of the total votes cast in that polling place. Do think that is a true representation of the district, the neighborhood.. No its not. A total distortion of the electorate. Its not representative of the actual make up of the district. Most of the students at LU will leave the area once they’ve graduated. Some might not, but I’d bet a majority book it for better prospects elsewhere.
Personally I think more people should have turned out, but I don’t think SV had the resources to send buses out to pick people up and get them to the polls, and if she had, the other side would be screaming bloody about that.
What will happen if the university continues to act with this sort of unilateralism, is that it will just further alienate the community, and support for the University within it. Something I would imagine the University doesn’t desire.
@pdpixel: The student to city population in all those places far outstrips what it is here. —- Then it really shouldn’t be that difficult to “overcome” the Liberty vote. Right?
And I take you want LU to stay but to give up its’ theological perspective.
Then it wouldn’t be an evangelical Christian school.
Again, Liberty has no interest in running Lynchburg. You would do well to give them their property rights back.
Also, Liberty contributes hundreds of thousands of hours of community service and with almost 5,000 town students has contributed to a housing boom.
Give em a break. You don’t want them to run the city but then you want them to…which is it dude?
All Liberty wants back is it property rights. They have no interest in running the city of Lynchburg.
Just give em the property rights back that were taken away in the early 90’s.
All LU wants is its’ property rights back.
Whollottashakin
The loss of these sorts of jobs all across the country is a result of a national economic policy which assumed that what is good for wall street is good for main street. Just because the value of a stock is going up, does not mean more jobs. A lot of the time it means LESS jobs. Unrestrained deregulated capitalism did this. These are policies which have taken hold largely among conservative and neocon thinkers. Although Clinton also bares some blame, and there are plenty of Dems who went right along for the ride (and got stinking richer in the bargain). True conservatives saw this and railed all through the 90’s and early 2000’s BUT NO ONE HAS BEEN LISTENING. I saw plenty of essays and reports by conservative writers in the early to mid 2000’s that laid out EXACTLY was was going to happen with the housing boom-crash. No one in DC was listening.
After less than a year in office I don’t think Obama can take the blame for what has happened. He has not done all the right things to help fix it either. But his hands are a little tied in this matter. The economy has been entirely in the hands of the GOP for 8 of the last 8.5 years, and in the last 4 years of Clinton’s admin, also controlled the GOP agenda via a majority in both houses. I think its ridiculous to think he’s gonna magically fix it in the next year or two. Laying blame on him or on Valentine for forces at work at a global level is pretty weak.
Training engineers, nurses GOOD. Getting them local jobs.. where. Who’s hiring. LU should team up with the city and find ways to help attract new industry. Instead of spending its energy trying to undermine local politics for its own theological and economic ends. It should be working WITH the city to try and get new green industry and research facilities here. So far I’ve heard zero about this sort of outreach.
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