Thursday, October 09, 2008

Student-Vote: Fraud, or Merely Illegal?

Headless did the homework.

We have already established that non-resident students living in university residence halls in Wisconsin cannot legally register and vote in Wisconsin. This does not contradict the wording of Section 6.10, Elector Residence, of the Wisconsin Statutes. [He then cites 6.10(4)]

...voting by these students is illegal, it is not fraud unless they were aware of the requirements for residency when they register or vote.

And Headless goes on, warning students that "establishing residency" in Wisconsin has a lot of implications, including possible loss of health insurance, driver's license requirements, etc.

2 comments:

grumps said...

The fallacy in your argument is that the seemingly simple word "residence" has different meanings as applied to voters and to tuition-payers. Don't conflate the two or you wind up making fallacious arguments.

Headless Blogger said...

Grumps - I specifically avoided applying the UW system's definition of resident versus nonresident student. I focused on the wording in the WI voting statute as it applies to students who claim their college accomodation as their bona fide permanent residence for voting purposes. It makes no difference whether the student hails from Appleton, Kalamazoo, or New York City. The law applies the same to all cases.

In fact, the one and only area where resident status does not change due to declaration of a WI residence is the resident status of UW students. That is in the statutes, too.

Where is this falacy of yours?