One Teen's Campaign To Restore Voting Rights

Source: Washington Post

Sarah Boltuck's senior year at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda was transformed by a rejection letter -- not from a college, but from the Montgomery County Board of Elections.

It said she could not vote in the February primary because she was not yet 18. Boltuck thought differently. She fought it all the way to the state elections board and the attorney general's office, and she won.

Last month, Boltuck, along with her father and a sympathetic state senator, persuaded Maryland's top legal minds to restore the right of suffrage to at least 50,000 teens who will turn 18 between the Feb. 12 primary and the Nov. 4 election.

"I thought that was one of my rights as a citizen of Maryland," said Boltuck, who will be 18 in July. "I had assumed that when I registered to vote, it'd be no problem."

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Maryland's primary will be held a week after Super Tuesday, in an election "where generational politics is the fault line," said Jamie B. Raskin, a constitutional law scholar who represents Silver Spring and Takoma Park in the Maryland Senate. Boltuck and her friends at Whitman are part of an age bracket unusually energized this election cycle, particularly in support of Boltuck's candidate, Democrat Barack Obama.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/20/AR2008012002366.html?hpid=topnews

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I don't care what Dem candidate you're backing - I say good for her and for her passion to be involved and take the time to vote and to fight for the right this election!

be able to vote in the Primary. The Primary is part of the General Election.

I hope young people (18/19-year-olds, and 20-somethings like me) turn out in droves for this one. Our nations' future is on the line. Sadly theres' a lot of apathy in young people today, let's hope theres' more where this one came from.