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Published: October 8, 2008
Liberty University submitted more than 4,200 completed voter registration forms to the Lynchburg City Registrar on Monday, the deadline to register to vote in November’s election.
“We were pleased with the final tally,” Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said Wednesday. Including an estimated 2,000 students who already were registered to vote locally, “that puts us in that 50- to 75-percent range that I was hoping for (out of Liberty’s potentially eligible 10,500 students).”
Last month, Falwell made an unprecedented call for students to vote locally, and announced that the school would cancel most classes on Election Day and provide bus transportation to the polls.
Larry Provost, director of commuter affairs, said that about two-thirds of the applications came from students living in dormitories who would vote at the Heritage Elementary School precinct. The remaining applications were from students who live off campus.
Before the Liberty surge, the Heritage Elementary precinct had about 1,900 registered voters, said Lynchburg voter Registrar Patricia Bower.
As of Wednesday morning, the Heritage number stood at 4,663, and counting.
“I think we can say at least 95 percent of that is Liberty-related,” Bower said.
Bower described the pile of Liberty applications as “several inches” high and said it probably would take the rest of the week to enter them in the computer system.
“That’s probably close,” Bower said of Liberty’s count of 4,200 applications.
“I don’t know how many we still have” to process, she said.
Several applications came in Monday afternoon just before the deadline for registering, and other applications came in Tuesday’s mail with postmarks from the day before, she said.
Bower said there was no way to separate the off-campus student applications from the ones generated by other voter-registration drives in Lynchburg.
Bower said those signups, conducted by door-to-door canvassers and at public gatherings, helped shorten the last-minute registration line at her office Monday. “It wasn’t long and out the door like we had in 2004” for the presidential election, she said.
Bower said that four to five volunteers plus three staff members were working with the applications.
One of those staffers was handling the task of calling and coordinating volunteers, some of whom were Liberty students, Bower said.
The majority of Liberty’s applicants were first-time voters, Provost said.
Liberty gained national media attention after Falwell’s announcement last month that it would distribute voter registration forms by the thousands in dorms and classrooms.
“That was amazing,” he said. “We had a TV crew from France, one from Norway in convocation Monday; we did an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Monday.”
He said the school plans to continue to push students to vote locally in future elections.
“If there are other colleges that have been doing this, they just haven’t gotten the attention,” he said. “It probably will catch on in the future.”
Reader Reactions
Wow, Grandma, I was impressed w/ your thoughtful comment until you started talking about ACORN thugs.
We have to realize that most of the students that register in Lynchburg will not be going back to their hometowns, and if they do, probably only long enough to move somewhere else for employment. Considering this, Lynchburg is now their place of residency.
I still contend it is a good thing they get involved in politics while still in college, something they might not do for many years that follow.
It could also be that what’s going on here in Lynchburg is keeping the ACORN hoodlums away.
damalama, are you serious? Brookville and JFHS v. LU football? The Lynchburg emergency room would be full of high school football players.
Wake up Lynchburg ! Do we really want these idiots running our city?
in the middle, the funny thing is that Jerry Junior and Senior think that liberty university is one of the “greats” like BYU, Arizona, as they called in when it was first began putting that CROOKED OFF CENTERED eyesore on the mountain. Liberty like BYU, or Arizona your joking right, go outside of central virginia and people go Liberty…what’s that? To compare football programs to, psssh it’s a second rate football team at most, i think the Brookville Bees or Jefferson Forest could take em down.
NAreader suggests the registration is a National initiative, fine. How is the drive for registration being carried out at other colleges? How is it being carried out at LU? Is there encouragement for all to register to vote and toward what end? Regardless of the college or university, should a largely (vast majority) transient population be encouraged to vote and make potential major changes to a locality knowing full well that they will not live in that locality?
I went to college. My time was spent mostly in the educational process, at times involving myself in community activities. I voted in each election in my home locality. That makes sense. Changing my address? Sure, I lived at my college 10 out of 12 months per year. It was not my home. I did not establish a home until I left college. I was transient. I was not part of the locality community, I was part of the college community. When I graduated, I moved on to locations where I was part of the locality.
The distinction between college community and locality community is, to me, critical. To vote in a local community election when I’m part of a college community just doesn’t make sense. The local community is not where my life is. The college community is.
Sure, large universities tend to swallow the small communities where they reside. However, Lynchburg is itself a fairly large locality, making it unlikely that LU will swallow it. What I think is important here is intent…is it the intent of LU or the Falwell business to change the landscape of politics in the local community and, thus, the local community by using the students? That is, in my mind, unethical. Or, is that not that case.
The idea that students live here and pay taxes here is absolutely moot. The context of their living is important. We pay taxes everywhere…that doesn’t give us the right to vote everywhere.
The other day, I saw a large “McCain Country” sign on Rivermont Avenue with Obama posters stuck all over it. I’m not a McCain supporter; regardless, I know that’s wrong and do not support the vandalism. I would not support an unethical voter registration by any institution if the intent is to use a transient population to change a local community to suit that institution. That’s just wrong. I hope that’s not the case with LU and I don’t trust that its not without more details.
everyone be careful what you say, don’t oppose it celebrate it!! or Jerry Junior will send his police force out to arrest you for opposing his attempted take over of the city council. if you believe that this is about electing the president then you are just a branwashed liberty alum or student, this is his scheme to take over city council by getting the people he wants on there to pass issues that are important to the school, like maybe putting a GOLDEN LU statue on the mountain next year.
NAreader, you’re absolutely right, it does happen elsewhere and I’m sure the communities in the areas that you mentioned greeted it with just as much resistance. My grandmother’s house was taken over by a local college that annexed her neighborhood. They paid her a very fair price for her home, but she was heartbroken to be forced to leave. She had no choice, it was “Here’s your money..now get out”.
She did not have a Blessed Day :-(
veritas, you are the one missing the point. If the other Colleges in Lynchburg were encouraging their students to register so that they could elect one of their own members into our local government, as to gain control over our City Council, you most certainly would here outrage. This is what the Falwells are doing. It’s not about the presidential election, it’s about gaining control of Lynchburg to give them free reign to do as they please, to receive city funds and to avoid paying any taxes on their empire. They know their students aren’t going to make an impact on the presidential election, it’s Lynchburg that they want to get their control over. When Jerry Jr. spoke to the students at LU he told them that they have the power to elect their own TRBC/LU members into City Council. If the other Colleges in Lynchburg were as dishonest and underhanded as LU, you would here the same comments coming from the same posters. So if you’re going to make accusations of hypocrisy, make sure you’re comparing apples-to-apples and not Respectable Colleges-to-a second rate neocon fundie fallback college.
And have a blessed day. 
“No where else… do college leaders try to take over the community in which they are located.“ Really? Are you kidding when you say this? I was raised near U.of Mich (during the Weather Underground days and for annual Ann Arbor Hash Bash, etc.) and lived as an adult in various communities with either a Big Ten or PAC Ten state university. I’ve lived in California… Have you ever been to Berkley, CA? “No where else… do [they] try to take over a community,“?!? Give it a rest, you’re not speaking within the realm of reality! Seriously, no one on the right or left believes that one.
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