For them to be in a community part-time and change the dynamics of a local election for people who live here 12 months out of the year and they're only living here part-time, I think that's really unfair philosophically.
-Representative Bob Thorpe (1)
The epigraph is Representative Bob Thorpe’s defense of HB 2461—a bill that would, in effect, stop NAU students from voting in the city of Flagstaff. Thorpe’s political motivations are obvious. He and his positions are unpopular with students, so keeping them away from the polls is good for his career.
Unfortunately, Thorpe’s gamesmanship is as savvy as it is obvious. He is playing to a familiar sentiment: ‘outsiders’ are usurping control from the ‘real Flagstaffians.’ The sentiment divides Flag into two camps, the ones who belong and rightfully influence the city’s direction, and those who threaten that arrangement. The sentiment is about identity: who gets to count as one of us?
This essay will focus on whether NAU students should be barred from voting in Flagstaff. But it is the familiar sentiment behind HB 2461 that makes the issue worth considering. Pitting those who belong against those who don’t is a favorite ploy of many politicians. It is a ploy that we all—whatever our political sympathies—should be able to recognize and call out.
How Would HB 2461 Disenfranchise Students?
It is a foundational principle of democracy that citizens should be allowed to vote in the municipalities they live in—in a slogan, residency implies voting rights. “Resident,” according to current Arizona law, “means an individual who has actual physical presence … combined with an intent to remain” (2).
It is tempting to think that the phrase “intent to remain” rules out NAU students. Students typically intend to find jobs when they graduate. For many, even most, that will mean leaving Flagstaff. Doesn’t that prove that they don’t really intend to stay?
In one sense, it does. Their overall life plans mean that many students will not make Flag their ‘forever home.’ But it would be outrageous to disenfranchise people for that reason. Imagine an engineer who moves here to take a job with Gore. She is excited to live in the mountains for a few years, but she’s pretty sure that she’ll eventually go back East to be closer to family. Or imagine a construction worker who comes to Flagstaff, but suspects that he will ultimately make his way to Las Vegas because the bigger city offers so many more building projects. Neither of these characters has an ironclad plan to make Flag their ‘forever home’; still, disenfranchising them would be undemocratic and wrong. If city governments could speculate about our futures to stop us from voting, no one’s right to vote would be secure. We would not live in a democracy.
So: like the engineer from the East Coast and the construction worker who might wind up in Vegas, NAU students have the legal right to vote in Flagstaff. How does Thorpe intend to change that? Read the last few lines of HB 2461.
[T]he following may not be used for determining residency for voter registration purposes … 1. A dormitory address or other temporary college or university address. 2. Any address within this state at which the individual does not intend to reside for twelve months of each year. (3)
Clause 1 would stop NAU students who live in University housing from voting in Flagstaff. Clause 2 would stop NAU students who live in local apartments but go elsewhere over the summer to avoid our notoriously high rental rates. Thorpe acknowledges that Clause 2 will affect a few non-students. But students are clearly his target.
What is wrong with HB 2461?
This section points out two problems with HB 2461. The first draws on democratic theory and will take a page or two to develop; the second is very straightforward.
Think, for a minute, about all the tasks necessary to keep Flagstaff in good shape: we need to protect our forests, remove snow from the roads, enforce sanitation in restaurants, collect trash and recycling, deal with wildfires, and generally maintain a reasonable public order. These tasks—all put together—are an enormous job. The law is our primary tool for doing it. The law tells us where we are allowed to cut down trees, establishes standards of cleanliness for restaurant kitchens, and the like. Ideally, it (a) tells people what they must do for the public good, and it (b) establishes penalties to coerce those who wouldn’t otherwise do their part.
At the same time, however, it is morally important to respect people’s freedom. City officials are just people. And people don’t generally have the right to determine how others will conduct their affairs—even if those others could use the guidance. Imagine, for example, that you could save your neighbor from financial ruin by seizing control of her accounts. Even though you would accomplish something important, it would be wrong for you to seize control. Again, people don’t generally have the right to determine how others will conduct their affairs.
So on the one hand, we need laws. But on the other hand, government officials are just people. Where do they get the right to regulate our behavior? The obvious answer—that we benefit from a reasonable legal order—cannot be correct. If it were, you’d have the right to seize your neighbor’s finances.
Long ago, philosophers and politicians turned to religion for an answer. Despite appearances, they argued, government officials are not ordinary people alongside you and I—God selected them to rule and granted them special authority. Sir Robert Filmer (in)famously used this line of thought in the 1600’s to defend the English monarchy. Thankfully, Locke, Rousseau, and the other social contract theorists whose work laid the foundation for the U.S. constitution had a better idea: democracy.
Without getting too bogged down in details, the basic idea is that government officials have the authority to write laws because ‘we the people’ chose them for that role. Government officials are nothing more than ordinary people, but they are temporarily empowered by the people to write and enforce the law. And that is why universal suffrage is so important: residents without the right to vote will be governed by people they had no hand in choosing. So in proposing HB 2461, Thorpe is denying students’ freedom. He is claiming the (God-given?) right to govern them without giving them the chance to be part of our democratic process.
That can sound like a merely academic problem. But it isn’t. Think about other groups in American history that were denied the right to vote. When Blacks and women won their suffrage, they took an important step towards being recognized as equals deserving of a political voice. Thorpe is proposing to take a step backwards. He plans to give students the same shameful treatment that we used to inflict on Blacks and women (4). So the first problem with HB 2461—the one that draws upon democratic theory—is that it would leave NAU students to be governed by politicians they had no hand in choosing. If women and minorities deserve better (and they do), students deserve better as well.
The second problem is much simpler: people without the right to vote are vulnerable. Democracy is not perfect. But it works as well as it does because politicians who harm large swathes of their constituency lose their jobs. It works because elected officials have to worry about keeping voters happy. Universal suffrage is not just important for recognizing people as equals deserving of a political voice, it forces governments to serve the people. The second problem with HB 2461 is that it would give elected officials carte blanche to treat students badly without suffering any direct blowback.
How will politicians use such carte blanche? I don’t know. The point is that HB 2461 opens a door that we should keep firmly shut: it would be possible to win elections in Flagstaff by ginning up and then exploiting anti-student sentiment. Politicians would have exactly zero incentive against passing (or promising to pass) measures that would harm students, so long as those measures are popular in key voting districts. If Thorpe had proposed to disenfranchise Flagstaff’s Navajo or Hopi residents, we would all be very worried about what was coming next—if not from Thorpe himself, from whatever future politician finds racism politically expedient. We should have analogous worries about HB 2461, and for analogous reasons.
Conclusion: Who Counts as ‘One of Us’?
Like the engineer whose eventual plans will take her back East, or the construction worker who is likely to wind up in Vegas, NAU students are a part of the Flagstaff community. They not mere tourists passing through. They live and work here.
It can, admittedly, be hard to include students in the Flagstaff community. What would be good for students will sometimes be bad other Flagstaff residents (and vice-versa, of course). But living in a community is always a matter of tradeoffs and compromise. Plans to widen Fort Valley Road will be good for those who want to get to Snow Bowl without sitting so long in traffic; people with homes in Coconino Estates are not thrilled about the prospect of living next to a bigger, busier road. Affordable housing is important for teachers, nurses, firefighters, and others; but it will mean putting buildings on sites that some think should remain pristine. Developing our downtown so that there is more space for businesses is a sound economic plan; but it will change the quaint, historical ‘feel’ that many Flagstaff residents have grown to love.
I don’t claim to know what we should do in each of these disagreements. But I do know that it would be outrageous to ‘solve’ the disagreement about widening Fort Valley Road by disenfranchising homeowners in Coconino Estates. Disenfranchising students is equally outrageous. For better and worse, they are a part of our community too.
Credit: Michael Patacsil, 2020
