This article has been corrected from its initial form. Radford City, not Montgomery County, was the subject of some controversy in 2005 regarding voter registrations. Neither Radford City nor Montgomery County rejected large numbers of voters in that year. Letters sent from the Radford City registrar to students in 2005 seeking clarification of their registration information when information was missing from their voter registrations.
This information has been removed because it does not add substantive clarification to an already murky issue.
The Collegiate Times regrets these errors.
Owing to Virginia's crucial status on the national electoral map, several politically-minded groups have come to Blacksburg hoping to register voters. However, simply registering to vote could have dire consequences for some college students.
In the past few days, Randy Wertz, the general registrar at the Montgomery County Voter Registration Office, said he has received phone calls from many distraught parents and worried students fretting over what legal implications are caused by registering to vote in Blacksburg.
Mark Everett, a senior in computer science, recently registered to vote in Blacksburg; his parents reside in Haynesville, Va. When approached by a voter registration campaigner, no mention was made of any implications in re-registering to vote with his Blacksburg address.
However, when a person's registration is switched to Montgomery County, it is required that they change their driver's license and car registration to their address in Blacksburg within 30 days.
"When a voter registers to vote in a county other than his hometown, you're supposed to change everything. Your car should be registered and your driver's license should be renewed," said Bruce Phillips, attorney at law of Student Legal Services,.
Everett was unaware of this law and expressed his dismay.
"I wish I had known that," Everett said. "I probably wouldn't have registered to vote in Blacksburg and would have sent in an absentee ballot."
Many students consider where their parents live to be their official address. But some consider Blacksburg, where they spend a majority of their year at school, to be their place of residency. Wertz said the misunderstanding of the law lies within where differing students consider themselves home.
"Domicile is the key," Wertz said. "By registering here, (students) consider this their domicile. They need to check with people once they claim this is their permanent residence. They need to check with tax attorneys or insurance people" to see whether they might be affected.
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