While the media sleeps

While the American media, for the past 10 days, has been obsessing over "Sister Sarah" Palin, lipstick, pit bulls, polls, moose innards, designer eyewear, up-dos and pigs, a lot of real electoral news-- not to mention domestic and world events--has gone largely unreported. Perched right at the top of the mountain of such issues is a recent report in the New York Times that E. Randall Wertz, the county registrar of voters in Montgomery County Virginia, recently issued two outrageous and confusing (at best) press releases with regard to college student voter registration.

The first of the official missives made several patently false claims:  1) the parents of students who register and vote locally cannot claim their children as dependents; 2) students registering to vote with a local college address risk losing scholarships; and 3) such students will no longer be eligible for coverage under their parent's health and auto insurance.

Coincidentally or otherwise, these official county notices went out in late August, in the midst of a highly successful voter-registration drive at Virginia Tech, the state's largest university which boasts an enrollment of over 25,000 students (over 5,000 of whom are incoming freshmen). At that time Barack Obama supporters had registered thousands of students.
Keep in mind that Virginia is a major swing state that in past years has been reliably Republican; however, this year Barack Obama has made significant inroads, claiming 64 percent to Hillary Clinton's 35 percent in the state's Democratic primary in February.  Many political analysts even predict that Obama could actually win the state in November, which would effectively signal nothing less than a historic sea-change in the American electoral map.  So, that is the backdrop of this grossly underreported controversy that is reminiscent of Jim Crow era electoral shenanigans.  

According to the Times, Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director of the Student Public Interest Research Group's New Voters Project, indicates that her organization "registered 500,000 young voters in 2004, the majority on college campuses, and we've never heard of a single one who lost health insurance, scholarship or tax status because of where they registered to vote. ...There's no issue for snowbirds who live in Iowa but fly to Florida for the winter.''

Understandably, this has all lead to mass confusion and anxiety among students and parents alike.  It has also prompted queries from civil rights lawyers who are quick to point out that this practice is in clear contravention of the landmark Supreme Court ruling Symm v. U.S. which clearly established that students can absolutely register to vote using their local college addresses, regardless of their permanent home addresses.  Jon Greenbaum, who directs the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law, condemns the highly suspect activities, saying in the Times that ''what the state Board of Elections has on its Web site," to [him], "sounds like it is discouraging students from registering at their school address.''  You think?  

The county registrar, who blames the "mix-up" on an intern tasked with summarizing the state's guidelines in this regard, confirms that some students have elected to withdraw their local registration, fearful that their families will be penalized economically.  The registrar claims that his office's "clarification" is driven by his interpretation of the state's election laws.  Which brings us to the heart of the matter:  the Virginia code with regard to college student voter registration is fuzzy, at best, while the law of the land is unequivocal:  A college student can absolutely register to vote using a local address.  There is really nothing complicated about it. Still, Werner claims that ''we've asked for more guidance from the state legislature, but they haven't wanted to deal with it.''  The obvious questions here, at least in my mind, are these:  "Why ever not?" and "Where are Obama's Ivy League legal experts?"

In response to the public outcry--and the civil rights lawyers--the Virginia State Board of Elections (VSBE) sought to "modify" and "clarify" the legal basis for the misleading communications disseminated by the Montgomery county registrar.  What did they do, you ask?  Amazingly, they have gone so far as to post on their website a "self-guided questionnaire"--that is not required, and some would even argue that it is not allowed, by law--to "assist" college students in determining their "legal" residency.  This harkening back to the very same tactics that the High Court ruled illegal almost thirty years ago when the Waller County Texas registrar of voters, LeRoy Symm, routinely required the students of the HBCU Prairie View A&M University to complete a residency questionnaire that is almost identical to the one on the VSBE website today--in 2008.

What does the Obama campaign have to say about this turn of events?  Not much.  According to the New York Times, Kevin Griffis, the campaign's state spokesperson said "the release appeared to be a good-faith effort to convey state guidelines, not a politically motivated effort to stop voting by students."  Really?  Good faith?

What is wrong with these people?!  Obama should have a swarm of lawyers blanketing the state, serving notice that he will not sit back and allow Virginia to be the Florida of 2008.  Are they so afraid of being accused of "race-baiting" or playing the "race card" that they will not call a spade a spade?  This is a clear violation of the voting rights of the students of Virginia Tech.  I know it.  You know it.  The state of Virginia knows it.  Barack Obama, the Harvard-trained lawyer knows it.  My word!  According to the VSEB website, "even the homeless may register by using the site 'where they lay their head at night.'"  Why, you might ask, have we heard virtually nothing of this in this, the 24-hour news cycle?  Which brings us back to where we started:  the corporate media and their shameful and disgraceful enablement of the Republican Party's pollutive and nauseating distraction campaign designed to sneak John McCain into the White House.

Perhaps nothing better crystallizes this parallel universe than the quietly incredulous musings of David Gergen, the vaunted advisor to four past American Presidents, reduced, in his capacity as a CNN political analyst, to providing "serious" analysis of the "Breaking News" of Sarah Palin's plane landing in Alaska, all set to bid Godspeed to her eldest son, before his deployment to Iraq the next day.  (Even Gergen observed that the timing of young Mr. Palin's departure is almost certainly not random.)  At 11:30 p.m. EST, on 10 September (conveniently just moments away from 9/11), he marveled at the "bizarre" and unprecedented blanket cable news coverage, of the sort not normally afforded to heads of state.

Heck, I'll go one better.  This is right up there with reportage of the Pope, and then some.  I'm with Gergen:  "This is wild."