Monthly Archive

I’ve heard several reports of student voters being challenged or turned away from the polls today, and a quick Google is turning up more. I’ll be collecting those stories and links here as the evening rolls on.

If you’ve got word of something I’ve missed, let me know.

CONNECTICUT | Three student voters from U Conn were challenged by “unofficial election checkers” deployed by the Republican Party to a local polling place, according to a district election official. All three challenges were rejected.

IOWA | Students at Central College were turned away from the polls when election officials refused to accept their dormitory housing contracts or college directory listings as proof of residency.

MICHIGAN | Reports say that students at the University of Michigan and Michigan State were turned away from the polls because the state had “automatically changed their addresses to match their driver’s licenses instead of their University of Michigan address.” More on the Michigan situation here.

SOUTH CAROLINA | The state Democratic Party says that self-described Tea Party activists harassed student voters this morning at Benedict College, a historically black institution in Columbia, SC. Other reports from Benedict indicate that student voters there were challenged and forced to submit provisional ballots.

VIRGINIA | Someone allegedly broke into Representative Tom Perriello’s campaign offices early this morning and tampered with door hangers meant for distribution at the University of Virginia, mixing up packets so that students would be directed to the wrong polling places. The campaign discovered the sabotage before noon, but many of the materials had already been distributed by then. (Perriello lost his re-election battle by a slim margin.)

Last Wednesday UC Berkeley Junior Laura Zelko finally got her day in court. Or “court.”

Sort of.

Zelko has been charged with five violations of the Berkeley code of conduct for her involvement in last November’s student protests. She’s the second such student to have received a hearing, and the first to choose to have her hearing conducted in public. (According to the Berkeley Daily Cal, seventeen students’ conduct cases remain unresolved.)

Zelko’s panel, composed of two professors, two students, and an assistant dean, met for eleven hours on Wednesday, but were unable to conclude their work. They will meet again sometime after November 8 to continue their deliberations.

Three members of the Berkeley community livetweeted the hearing, which saw confusion as to which version of the Berkeley code was being deployed and disagreement about whether it could legitimately proceed at all. University regulations mandate that such hearings be held within 45 days of the alleged conduct violation, but that provision was suspended last spring. Zelko asked that the charges against her be dropped due to the delay in bringing action against her, but the committee chose to proceed.