When college students won the right to vote

Mel Greenberg ’59 in his law office on Highland Street.

During his senior year at Clark, Geoffrey Steinberg ’73 wanted to cast his vote for George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election.

The City of Worcester slammed the ballot box shut.

It didn’t stay shut for long. In a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Steinberg, fellow Clark student Lanny Herkshoff ’73, and Richard Brontoli, a student at WPI, fought for the right to vote in their adopted hometown.

They won.

The case — Hershkoff v. the Board of Registrar of Voters (which included Steinberg’s and Brontolli’s associated cases) — changed Massachusetts voting regulations for college students. Tomorrow, when Clark students walk across Main Street to vote at St. Peter’s Church, they’ll be able to do so because of a few fellow Clarkies.

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Steinberg, a native of Pennsylvania, tried to register to vote in Worcester after the 26th Amendment — which lowered the voting age to 18 — was adopted in 1971, but was denied by the Registrar of Voters.

“They said, ‘You don’t live here,’” Steinberg recalls. “I told them that I did — I was in Worcester for 10 months out of the year. And I had even spent summers in Worcester.”

At the same time, Mel Greenberg ’59 had opened his law practice in Worcester and was serving as regional counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU was very interested in getting college students to vote, even if they traveled from another city — or state — to attend school.

More and more students tried to register to vote in Worcester as the Vietnam War went on, Greenberg says. Young men were getting drafted, and lines were being drawn between generations. “Students were questioning government policy, and the ACLU started representing conscientious objectors — and people who wanted to vote,” he remembers.

In late 1971 and early 1972, Steinberg and Hershkoff (who could not be reached for this story) were among college students statewide trying to register to vote where they attended school. Greenberg, who at the time taught a law class at Clark, says the ACLU filed several lawsuits in different Massachusetts cities — including Cambridge and Amherst — to challenge the voting restrictions that were preventing Steinberg and his peers from voting in their college towns.

“Once you registered to vote, you could run for office,” Greenberg says from his Worcester law office. “Amherst was up in arms because they were afraid UMass students would try to take over the entire city government.”

But Robert O’Keefe, the longtime Worcester city clerk and registrar of voters — and a member of the Clark University Class of 1948 — “was probably the most dogmatic of all the registrars in the state,” Greenberg says.

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O’Keefe’s rejection of the students’ voter registration requests came down to one word: domicile.

“The classic legal definition of ‘domicile’ for voting purposes was that you had to have a physical place where you lived in the city, and — and this is where O’Keefe went wrong — you had to intend to live there indefinitely,” Greenberg explains.

“His position was that students were only in Worcester for the duration of their schooling — they weren’t here ‘indefinitely,’ so they couldn’t vote. He says they were not domiciled here, so he turned them away.”

“I was committed to the community,” Steinberg says. “I told them I had no present intention to leave. And that was the key phrase that came up in the court cases. We didn’t look at ourselves as temporary community members.”

Absentee ballots were available if the students registered to vote in their hometowns, but it wasn’t a reasonable option, Greenberg says. “You had to do that well ahead of time, and it wasn’t always feasible or practical.”

In March 1972, the Worcester Board of Registrar of Voters held a hearing to review the students’ applications to vote and officially denied them on the grounds that their domiciles were in different states — Hershkoff and Brontoli in New York and Steinberg in Pennsylvania.

Greenberg petitioned for writs of certiorari, asking the Worcester Superior Court to review the decision. ACLU monitors had accompanied the students when they tried to register to vote, so there was a tape recording of exactly what had happened. They also were able to get city registration records to show how many students were being turned away.

“This was basically a question of law: “What’s the definition of ‘domicile’ for voting purposes?” Greenberg says. “Sometimes legal issues boil down to pretty simple questions, even though lawyers do their best to complicate them.”

During the trial, the Clark students testified about their experiences. “They were articulate and made good witnesses,” Greenberg says. “That was one of the reasons they were chosen for the case.”

Thanks to the tape recordings and registration records, the facts of the case were not in doubt. “The question was, what does the registrar have to say for himself? So we subpoenaed him in,” Greenberg says.

O’Keefe testified that because the students were not emancipated from their parents, they were not able to choose their domicile for voting registration. “He wasn’t arbitrary,” Greenberg says. “He was stuck in this view.”

Greenberg argued that the students “had the intention of staying in Worcester for at least four years,” to earn their degrees, and that was sufficient to consider them as domiciled in the city of Worcester.

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In September 1972, Judge Samuel Tisdale issued his ruling that reversed the Board of Registrars’ decision and ordered that the students be allowed to register to vote.

But that wasn’t the end of it. The City of Worcester appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the state’s highest court.

In the meantime, Election Day arrived. “We wanted to vote, so we went there, and they said no” because the case was under appeal, Steinberg says.

Steinberg insisted that even though they were appealing the court’s decision, there was no stay of the order, so they were eligible to vote.

Greenberg had accompanied the students to the polling place and helped reach a compromise. The students were allowed to cast their votes, but they would be on paper ballots and would be witnessed by multiple people. If the city won the appeal, their votes would be deducted from the final tally.

“I didn’t care,” Steinberg says. “I was voting proudly for George McGovern and various other people. It was fine with me if they saw who I was voting for.”

“I grew up being taught that voting mattered,” he adds. “When I was a kid, I went with my mother to every election. It was a very important thing to me.”

On September 19, 1974, Greenberg argued the case before the Supreme Judicial Court. Three months later, the ruling came down: the lower court’s decision was confirmed. College students were allowed to register to vote in Worcester and, by extension, Massachusetts. The case set legal precedent and is referenced in the “Residence for Voting Purposes” booklet published by the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“Everybody braced for some sort of student movement where people would start to register in large numbers and have political influence in their communities,” Greenberg says. “And students did register — but it wasn’t what they were afraid of. Students did not take over the reins of government.”

The appeal wasn’t decided until well after Steinberg had graduated from Clark, but he is proud of the experience. “I believe in the importance of civic participation and voting,” he says, encouraging younger generations to be involved.

After graduating from Clark, Steinberg spent time in the corporate world, then earned a doctorate in information systems from Temple University and embarked on an academic career at Kent State University. He retired last year after 32 years as a business professor. Over that time, he saw a reduction in civic interest among students.

“We all have a stake in what happens,” he notes, “but the younger you are, the longer your stake — the greater the impact it will have on the rest of your life. If you walk away from the opportunity to have an impact, you’re giving up a lot.”