By Benjamin Yount  Illinois Statehouse News

SPRINGFIELD  –  The potential of thousands of new voters on college campuses across Illinois has lawmakers in Springfield split on a plan that would make it easier for some of those voters to cast a ballot.

State Sen. Mike Frerichs, D-Champaign, said it just makes sense to allow students who may still be registered back home to vote from their new home at school.

“Every election cycle we see low voter participation from students and young people in our state…What I’d like to do is decrease barriers for them to get out and vote.  People lament the apathy out there,” he said.

Frerichs said there was a huge turn-out among young voters in 2008 when President Barack Obama topped the ballot.  He doesn’t want that to be a one-time event.

But not every lawmaker who represents a state university is as excited about a surge in voters from their local campus.

State Rep. Bob Pritchard, R-Sycamore, said another influx of young Democrats may be just what Frerichs, and other Democrats, want.

Pritchard said there is already plenty of political activity on the Northern Illinois University campus, without another polling place for students.

“We’ve got high school kids who’ve turned 18 and they don’t have any trouble finding the polling place.  I don’t think college kids who are motivated to vote have trouble finding the voting booth.  How far are we going to [take] this, if a person doesn’t want to vote that they have to vote.”

Pritchard said many young people only vote for the races at the top of ticket.  He said they can cast that ballot through their home counties.

State Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington, said requiring local election offices to now handle thousands of out-of-town voters is not a wise move.

(I) don’t think it’s something we should be mandating.  And I think we’re starting to cross the line of losing control on the security side of an election,” he said.

But Pricilano Fabian who is the undergraduate student government president at Southern Illinois University’s Carbondale campus said many students don’t know how to find local election offices.

“It would provide easier access for students to vote on campus rather than drive somewhere they don’t know how to get to,” she said.

Fabian also said anything that helps get young people involved in the process is a good thing.

State Sen. Gary Forby, D-Benton, represents the campus area at SIU.  He said early polls on campuses would make it easier for students, and candidates.

“Maybe the legislators will be able to get up to them and talk to them and say ‘this is why you need to vote.’ And if [the students] say ‘well you know I’m busy [on Election Day] going back to Chicago or coming back home,’ they can say: pick one of us, go vote, because it counts.”

State Rep Rich Myers, R-Macomb, said he’d like to see more students cast a ballot.  But he wonders if the early option would help that happen.

“I think it sounds like a good idea; I don’t know how many college kids you’re going to get to comply with all of that.  In my home county, which is home to Western Illinois University, they tried that several years ago.  They put a polling place on the campus and turn-out was extremely poor,” he said.

Myers said early voting, grace-period voting and grace-period registration may produce a different result.

State Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, said he’s not worried about turn-out as much as cost.

Righter said a mandate from Springfield will certainly cost money, and could cost local voters a polling place of their own.

Righter said local officials are local for a reason.

“Each of those county clerks are individually elected county-wide.  And he or she knows best where to spend their resources, where to put these kinds of facilities. I don’t think it’s Springfield’s job to tell those county clerks ‘OK, you have to put one here’ because when we do that they either have to pull resources away from somewhere else where they were doing something.  And if they don’t have that kind of flexibility, it’s going to result in a tax increase.”

Frerichs shepherded his proposal past its first statehouse hurdle by gaining committee approval.  But he’s not guessing when the full Senate could vote on his plan.