New Hampshire HB 176 is outrageous

The new New Hampshire Republican state House speaker William O’Brien is trying to limit where college students vote.

They’re “foolish,” lack “life experience” and “they jsut vote their feelings,” he said, according to this Washington Post article.

The bills, particularly House Bill 176, that New Hampshire’s House Republicans are pushing would prohibit college students from voting in state.  One bill would only permit students to vote in their town if they or their parents previously established permanent residency there.  Another would end Election Day registration.  O’Brien said that “unleashes swarms of students on polling places, creating opporunities for fraud,” according to the Post’s article.

This is absolutely outrageous.  What about student’s right to the first amendment?

Thankfully, the backlash has already started.  Boston University’s the Daily Free Press wrote an editorial slamming O’Brien’s ideas.  It’s unconstitutional, it said.

Protests have started in front of the state house in recent weeks, and the action has caught national media attention.

College students some of the most informed people in the nation, and  restricting OUR right to vote is absolutely unconstitutional.  Some students, however, support the bill.  This Facebook group is an example.

Students in New Hampshire should keep fighting, and student newspapers everywhere should keep printing editorial after editorial and story after story keeping their peers updated on this critical bill.  Mr. O’Brien’s stereotyping of all college students as “liberals” and his blatant disrespect of the future of this country should not be tolerated.

From left, Mike Reeves, Haley Levine, Kayla Claire, Krystal Jacobs, Maggie Peake, and Elyse Sedgley all sing a rendition of the Black Eyed Peas' song, Where is the Love, during a rally to protest House Bill 176, which would restrict college students from voting in the town where they attend school, at the State House on Thursday, Feb. 24, 2011. All of the singers are currently students at Plymouth State University, except for Peake.