Morgan Mohr, an IU sophomore in political science and history, testified against the Indiana Senate elections committee regarding Senate Bill 466 on Monday.
Mohr represented herself in this testimony, but she said she had the interests of all of her fellow students in mind.
Senate Bill 466 involves various election matters, including all elections from midterms to general elections. Section 6 was the part of the bill that ignited Mohr’s drive to speak up in her state.
That particular section of the bill states that a person cannot gain residency in a precinct in which the person is physically present for temporary employment, educational purposes, preparing to purchase or occupy a residence or other purposes without the intent of making a permanent home in the precinct.
“It restricts and disenfranchises students to where their homes and communities are at school,” Mohr said.
Mohr said it essentially boils down to the where the student considers home to be, but this section is forcing students to allow the state to make that decision for them.
One of the main concerns Mohr has regarding this restriction is the disturbance on civic engagement. When students are forced to fill out absentee ballots in order to perform their civic duty, they become lazy and uninterested in voting in general, ?she said.
In the 2014 midterm elections, IU had a significantly low turnout for students going to the polls. Section 6, through the eyes of Mohr, fuels voter suppression rather than the needed ?encouragement to vote.
“Indiana in general has the lowest turnout in the country,” Mohr said. “We need to facilitate voter registration to fix this problem.”
Looking at the bill as a whole, some changes are common with election codes. Transition to digital voting booths and ballot counting makes some changes inevitable. The codes are part of a constant negotiation between both sides of the ?political spectrum.
Mohr said she believes the solution is to return the section to its original wording. This would allow residents to easily prove residency in their desired precinct without the push of the law behind them. No bias towards college voters would exist in Mohr’s ?scenario.
Mohr said she has a plea for her fellow students to be aware of what is happening around them. She said she doesn’t believe IU would have a large enough political push in its current state.
The last part of this section Mohr said she believes could be a detriment to her and her peers is the aspect of “brain draining.” Brain draining is the emigration of intelligent people to somewhere for better conditions, causing the place they came from to lose those skilled people, or “brains.”
When students leave the state to attend school other places, it can have huge economic ramifications on ?Indiana.
Students might become more inclined to leave the state if their voice is not ?allowed within the state.
Mohr said she always had plans to go testify against this particular section once it was officially announced. She is very politically active both on and off campus.
“I believe fundamentally the right to vote should not be a partisan issue,” Mohr said. “This attacks the centrality of my beliefs.”
