Gansler: 17-Year-Olds Should Vote in Primary

WASHINGTON - Seventeen-year-olds will be able to vote in Maryland's Feb. 12 presidential primary.

An opinion Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler issued will require the Maryland State Board of Elections to continue registering 17-year-olds to vote if they are 18 by the time of the General Election.

"Freedom of association in the federal Constitution trumps any state interest in not allowing 17-year-olds to vote; therefore, anybody who is 17 and will be 18 and eligible to vote in the general election can now vote again," Gansler tells WTOP.

The issue came up when Maryland's Court of Appeals added a line in a separate ruling that voters needed to be 18 to vote in primaries. Last year, Assistant Attorney General Mark Davis informed the elections board that his reading of the opinion led him to conclude only 18-year-olds could vote in the primary and general elections.

The board then sent letters to 17-year-olds notifying them they would not be able to vote in the primary.

A state senator requested Gansler's opinion after the Democratic and Republican parties both voted this week to ask the elections board to restore the voting rights of 17-year-olds in primaries.

"Both parties have requested the ability for 17-year-olds to participate in the primary election as long as they will be 18 at the time of General Election," Gansler said. "That is consistent with Supreme Court precedent which says partisan political organizations enjoy the freedom of association which is protected by the First Amendment."

Gansler says his opinion is a balance between the First Amendment's right of association and the state's interests.

He says if his office had taken the other side on the matter, the Attorney General's office would have been saying to political parties, "No, you don't have the right to make your own rules in selecting your own nominees."

The Maryland State Board of Elections is expected to bring up the issue at a meeting Thursday.

Ross Goldstein, deputy administrator for Maryland State Board of Elections, tells WTOP: "We haven't received the Attorney General's ruling yet. We'll be meeting tomorrow, and the decision will be one of the things we discuss.

"I don't want to prejudge what the Board will do, but in theory, notices would be sent out to those 17-year-olds alerting them of the decision. Up until now underage voters go into the voter registration system, but they're put on a pending status. We'd go into the computer and switch them to active status."

There are 3,600 17-year-olds registered in Maryland. Goldstein says typically only about 2,000 of them vote in a presidential primary.

(Copyright 2007 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)