For many college students, the first time they have a chance to vote is when they’re at college. Many students choose to vote at school, rather than at home. They’re getting involved in a new community and thinking about putting down roots there, and they want to participate in politics. Dan Severson doesn’t think they should be allowed to.

I recently received the transcript of a meeting Dan Severson had with the William Mitchell Law School GOP early this year. In that meeting, he stated his belief that college students should not be allowed to vote in the precinct where they attend school:

You know one of the provisions that we have right now is that colleges in local communities are really steering local elections and that becomes problematic. You don’t pay taxes in the local area where you may reside here during the school year and then you go home and go to your parents or someplace else and get a job someplace else. But when you come to this district, and you cast your vote for whoever is running here, it does not necessarily reflect the attitudes or the requests of the local population. That’s problematic in my view. Because you are compelling someone who is not a taxpayer, someone who is not engaged in the political process locally here is casting a vote that is going to the people that live there and pay the taxes there are going to have to live with. 

Severson’s position that students shouldn’t be able to vote in their precinct at school is troubling, but his reasoning is even worse. Who does Severson think he is to make judgments on who is “engaged in the political process?” What makes him so sure that students who vote are less engaged than any other voting member of the community? Severson’s disdain for students is simply appalling.