Student barred from running for office

[struggle4progress]

By Elizabeth Bartholf | The Daily Tar Heel
Updated: 08/26/13 2:27am

Ever since he shook Barack Obama’s hand during the 2008 primaries, Montravias King knew he wanted to get involved in politics.

But when the senior at Elizabeth City State University submitted his name for a city council race this year, the Pasquotank County Board of Elections voted to bar him from running, saying King could not use his campus address to run for the seat ...

“They don’t have any legal precedent to say that a dormitory can’t be a permanent address,” Barnett said. “Their rationale is that because you can only live in the dorms for nine months out of the year, that can’t be considered your permanent address.”

King said he has lived on campus since he started at ECSU in 2009 and has spent most summers living there. He has voted in Pasquotank County for four years using his campus address ...

http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2013/08/student-politicians-0826

[struggle4progress]

1. County elections boards in NC challenging college student voting patterns

Published: August 19, 2013
By Anne Blythe — [e-mail]

... Pete Gilbert, the Pasquotank Republican Party chairman, has tried to put a halt to King’s candidacy in a campaign that could test the scope of the state’s elections law changes. As voting site changes are proposed for other college campuses, the Eastern North Carolina incident also could test the extent to actions that voting rights advocates have described as a GOP-controlled effort to weaken turnout among young voters more likely to vote against them.

Gilbert argues that Elizabeth City State University students who live in campus dorms have not established residency for the purpose of voting. He contends a dorm room occupied for only part of the year is a temporary residence, and the county elections board, controlled by Republicans, agreed in a 2-1 vote on Aug. 13 to bar King from the city ballot. The chairman was expected to sign the order on Monday, opening a 48-hour window for appeal to the state Board of Elections.

Clare Barnett, an attorney at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, the Durham-based nonprofit organization representing King, argues the local board’s decision is based on a misapplication of the law and a well-established right of college students to vote in their college communities ...

Gilbert has filed other challenges against Elizabeth City State University students, charging that they are temporary residents who should not able to vote locally if they live on campus. In Pasquotank County, there are 1,345 voters registered in the campus precinct for Elizabeth City State, and, King said, a large campus turnout can have an impact on local election results ...

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/19/3120626/county-elections-boards-in-nc.html

[struggle4progress]

2. Dorm residency issue is settled NC law

Published: August 20, 2013
By Gerry Cohen

The decision of the Pasquotank County Board of Elections to reject the city council candidacy of an Elizabeth City State University student because he lives in a dorm raises again the issue of student voting in college towns.

His candidacy in a primarily black ward was challenged by a white political party chairman. It has been settled law in North Carolina that students could vote where they go to school, specifically including a dorm, as long as they do not intend to return to their parents’ home to live after graduation. That was the unanimous N.C. Supreme Court holding in the 1979 Lloyd v. Babb case in which petitioners challenged 7,000 Orange County voters and in the 1972 case of Hall v. Wake County concerning Meredith freshman Kathy Hall, who lived in a dorm. The General Assembly in the 1980s wrote the holding of the Lloyd case into a statute.

I’ve been following this issue for over 40 years after working with Kathy Hall as she prepared for her 1971 Board of Elections hearing, and I was an intervening defendant in the Lloyd case. I pored through the several-foot-tall stack of challenges of all dorm and apartment residents in 1977 and discovered that even Dean Smith’s residence was challenged ...

There have been just four students elected to local office in North Carolina in more than 40 years: me (Chapel Hill, 1973), Mark Chilton (Chapel Hill, 1991), Andy Ball (Boone, 2009) and Derwin Montgomery (a Winston-Salem State University dorm resident elected to the Winston-Salem city council in 2009), hardly a threat to the Republic ...

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/20/3122658/dorm-residency-issue-is-settled.html#storylink=cpy

[d_r]

3. what are the residency laws for any

other address in NC? If you move into a house, how long do you have to live there before running for office?

OK, I found the state law. After reading it, I don't think he has a very strong case. Now, I think the "does he subscribe to the local paper? Where are family pictures kept?" types of questions are silly. But the burden of proof falls to the candidate, and he doesn't have a permanent address in the dorm to show the intention of domicile.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncsbe.gov%2FGetDocument.aspx%3Fid%3D2281&ei=40MdUvu4IsOosATtroDwCw&usg=AFQjCNFwuMDJv60LWWK2TsXZOnR5t1RB4w&sig2=8BbUx3QNOXiXsuU30ibQkw&bvm=bv.51156542,d.cWc&cad=rja

[struggle4progress]

5. The distinction between residence and domicile is made with respect to both

voter registration and candidacy in NC. Current NC law generally recognizes at-school addresses as residences for voter registration purposes

As current NC law also requires candidates to be registered voters, the most natural presumption would be that differences between the meanings of residence and domicile, for candidates or voters, if such differences do exist, ought to be minimal and ought only be recognized if supported by substantial public policy considerations

That is, residence and domicile determinations for candidacy purposes should track residence and domicile determinations for voter registration purposes, as closely as reasonably possible

My own impression, from years of registering potential student voters, is that people are usually quite honest about such matters: persons attending school in NC, who consider themselves residents of a state other than NC, will (when offered the opportunity to register to vote in NC) will decline and directly say that they consider themselves residents of another state; and similarly those, who are unsure of the law and need the distinction between residence and domicile explained, will also directly say that they intend to return to their prior place of residence after completing their schooling, if that is their intent

In King's case, he has been voting legally from school addresses for some years, and his attempt to run for office in that town strongly suggests to me a genuine and serious intent to remain there after his campus career concludes

[Downwinder]

4. Wouldn't that definition of permanent residency rule out military

personnel in NC or at least those in barracks?

[struggle4progress]

6. Military personnel absent from NC on assignment can use an absentee ballot

http://www.ncsbe.gov/content.aspx?id=134