Pro Publica has a good retelling
of a story familiar to most Arkansans — when OBU student Sarah Huckabee linked up with the ACLU to successfully challenge a Democrat’s effort to discourage college student voting in Arkadelphia.

She’s of course now Sarah Sanders, Donald Trump’s press secretary, and her thoughts on college student voting as well as those of her father, the former governor, are a critical missing element. As Pro Publica notes:

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While the Trump administration hasn’t weighed in specifically on student voting rights, it has supported states that impose voter identification requirements or purge voter rolls. By contrast, the Obama administration pushed to expand access to the polls. Contacted by ProPublica, Sanders requested a list of written questions, but then did not respond to them.

….Republican efforts to suppress student voting became more prevalent after college-age turnout spiked in the 2008 election, contributing to Obama’s victory, said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. In 2014, Florida’s division of elections under a Republican secretary of state barred counties from placing early voting locations on college campuses. Saying that this policy created “a stark pattern of discrimination,” a federal judge last month ruled that campus buildings in Florida can be open for early voting this fall.

Republicans killed a plan to have an early voting center on the University of Arkansas campus, it’s worth noting.

Good quote in story:

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“It’s not lost on us that Sanders has joined an administration that is actively defending unlawful voter purges and voter disenfranchisement,” said Rita Sklar, who was executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas when it represented Sanders, and holds the same position today. “Maybe she can talk to her boss about it.”

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