Franklin and Marshall College reportedly receives ‘cease and desist’ letter from Lancaster County commissioners’ office after student voter registration dustup
College students have a right to vote in the state where they attend school, and it is not illegal to be registered in two states.
A dustup over student voter registrations is continuing in Lancaster County. Franklin and Marshall College received what it has called a “cease and desist” letter from the Lancaster County commissioners’ office over the issue.
Last week, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt sent a letter to the Lancaster County Board of Elections alleging that employees at the board had violated state and federal law by denying voter registration and in-person mail ballot requests from college students. Schmidt’s letter claimed that county election officials had been improperly rejecting those requests because the students did not have Pennsylvania driver’s licenses or were registered in other states.
The correspondence came after Lancaster Online reported that the county had not processed roughly 30% of applications submitted by Franklin and Marshall College students. The ACLU also sent a letter to the Lancaster County Board of Elections urging it to register students to vote.
College students have a right to vote in the state where they attend school, and it is not illegal to be registered in two states, The Inquirer has reported. Lancaster County commissioners later argued in a public meeting that Schmidt’s letter was based on false claims, and Chairman Joshua Parsons claimed that both Schmidt and local journalists were baselessly attacking election staff.
Now, Lancaster Online reports that the school received a “cease and desist” letter last week, with F&M spokesperson Peter Durantine saying that the document instructed the college to not speak about county employees. Durantine declined to comment further when reached by The Inquirer.
The Lancaster County commissioners’ office did not respond to a request for comment.
Durantine told Lancaster Online that the college was “not making accusations” about the situation and instead was “simply asking why the students were not registered.”
Durantine also told the outlet that Franklin and Marshall College has responded to the “cease and desist” letter with its own letter that rebuts the county’s claims. Neither letter has been made publicly available.
”We understand the law,” Durantine said. “We’ve always understood the law.”