An interesting description of facts from Maine.  College students there are registered in more than one state.  In 2008, they voted at their Maine college campus for President; in 2010, they voted back home in Massachusetts.  From Patch:

“I’m surprised to be on this list and I’m surprised that it’s an issue that I voted in Maine at all,” he said. “We were encouraged to vote when we were on campus, and we were told that voting on campus was legal. I think this unfairly targets out-of-state students, as it’s much harder for those of us who are out of state to vote via absentee,” he said in the Daily News.

Who “encouraged” them to register and vote in Maine??  The article is silent.

I recently saw a presentation in Cincinnati by a noted election attorney who walked step by step through the voter registration portion of the Obama for President campaign website.  The website, when encouraging students to participate in the 2008 election, was also encouraging them to register and vote in the state where they attend school – depending on which states are involved. 

For example, a New York resident attending school in Virginia was encouraged to also register to vote in Virginia and vote in Virginia for President.  A Virginia resident attending school in New York, however, was encouraged to vote in Virginia.  The presentation ran through the matrix of several geographic fact patterns.  What became clear was that the Obama campaign was encouraging students to reorient their residence and register to vote in new location, regardless of parental tax status for dependants, tax status, car registration, or any other indicia of residency.  Some states, such as the Virginia Secretary of the State Board of Elections (a partisan appointee) was compliant with this political strategy by dissolving state regulations involving tests of actual domicile.  Election Law Center has previously covered this potentially racially discriminatory practice. 

There is evidence that some of the students in Virginia may have voted twice in the Presidential election – both in Virginia and in their home state.  If so, that is a federal crime and this story hasn’t finished.  Stay tuned.