Could a high school teacher require their students to register to vote in New York? Suppose that I'm a social studies teacher in a high school in New York state. Odds are good that I'm teaching high school seniors about American history and politics. I want my students to get involved in the system that they're a part of. I tell my students that I will give them extra credit if they register to vote. My Questions Would giving this as an assignment be legal under New York state law? If it's not forbidden under state law, could it be forbidden by individual counties, towns, districts, or schools? Potential Complications Privacy. Some students might be fine with registering, but not with telling me. Citizenship. Some of my students might be undocumented, or might be on a foreign exchange. Age. I know you can register if you're going to be 18 before election day, but some of my students might just miss the cutoff. Assumptions and Facts It's a public school. I'd prefer to give out forms and have my students fill them out in class that day, but I could live without it. I know exactly as much about my student's age and citizenship as I'm legally allowed to know. It doesn't matter what offices are on the next ballot. It would be a small and optional assignment; you could get an A in the class without doing it. Giving out a grade for actually voting is beyond the scope of this question (and likely moot, since few people would be over 18 at the start of the academic year).
According to New York law ELN § 17-142: Except as allowed by law, any person who directly or indirectly, by himself or through any other person: 1. Pays, lends or contributes, or offers or promises to pay, lend or contribute any money or other valuable consideration to or for any voter, or to or for any other person, to induce such voter or other person to vote or refrain from voting at any election, or to induce any voter or other person to vote or refrain from voting at such election for any particular person or persons, or for or against any particular proposition submitted to voters, or to induce such voter to come to the polls or remain away from the polls at such election or to induce such voter or other person to place or cause to be placed or refrain from placing or causing to be placed his name upon a registration poll record or on account of such voter or other person having voted or refrained from voting for or against any particular person or for or against any proposition submitted to voters, or having come to the polls or remained away from the polls at such election, or having placed or caused to be placed or refrained from placing or causing to be placed his or any other name upon the registry of voters; ... is guilty of a felony. I think extra credit could be considered &quot;valuable consideration&quot;.
Assuming, for purposes of argument, that such a change could be made by executive order, or indeed by legislation, rather than by amendment, yes, the change could and would have to have an effective date, and apply only to persons born after that date. Indeed that would still be true if such a change were made by constitutional amendment. Consider, people whose parents (or one of whose parents) are US citizens, but who are born outside of the US, are or may become citizens (by statute), but only if the citizen parent complies with certain rules specifying a minimum period of residence in the US, and other conditions. Those periods and conditions have changed over the years, and each such change had an effective date. If such a change could be made but could not be made with an effective date, then it would apply retroactively, and deprive people who are already citizens of their citizenship. There is no valid equal protection claim, because the same rules apply to both individuals, they merely give different results for the different birth dates. (See my answer to this question for why I do not think such a change would be valid except by Constitutional Amendment.) EDIT: I suppose such a changed interpretation, if made at all, might take the position that such births never did validly convey citizen ship, and all people whose parents were not validly in the country had never been citizens. That strikes me as even less likely to pass judicial review, but one cannot know what the Supreme Court will do when faced with a truly novel situation.
The exact procedure varies from one district to the next, but generally speaking, it is essentially by lottery. The procedure is typically spelled out in the court's local rules. Jump to page 105 of SDNY's local rules for an example. The lottery system is not entirely random, though. Frequently it is weighted to make it more likely that a case is assigned to a judge from the district's courthouse nearest to the parties, or to make it less likely to be assigned to the chief judge or a judge on senior status. There are then various other rules governing assignments of cases to new judges or visiting judges, but those typically don't happen when a case is originally filed.
In South Carolina for example the law says A permit holder must have his permit identification card in his possession whenever he carries a concealable weapon. When carrying a concealable weapon pursuant to Article 4, Chapter 31, Title 23, a permit holder must inform a law enforcement officer of the fact that he is a permit holder and present the permit identification card when an officer: (1) identifies himself as a law enforcement officer; and (2) requests identification or a driver’s license from a permit holder. In Washington, on the other hand, the law simply requires a permit (or the gun must be locked in the trunk), and you have no obilgation to volunteer such information. Some states allow local options, e.g. NY generally has no duty to inform law but apparently Buffalo, Rochester and NYC do. It's pretty complex, because there is variation in exactly what laws say depending on whether the gun is loaded, or whether it is concealed, or in the trunk.
Massachusetts is a 'two-party' state. So you'd have to have consent from them to record. You could probably travel to a 'one-party' state such as one of the states listed here and call them while recording. In a one-party state, only one of the parties to the conversation needs to know about the recording. In those states you don't even need to inform them. It would be interesting to see if the law applied to where the call center is located. When calling credit card companies these days, the call may be routed to any number of places depending on call loads, and those places might be out of country as well.
In an extreme hypothetical situation: at a meeting where there is a quorum present, there are 50 members qualified to vote in attendance. An issue comes up for a vote, and 45 people abstain, 3 vote yes, 2 vote no. Would this pass 3 to 2, or is there some overriding part of &quot;majority present and voting&quot; that I am just not understanding? The measure would pass 3-2. The words mean what they say. Quorum requirements prevent the small number of people voting from being unfair.
For federal trials, 28 USC 1865(b) states that the judge shall deem any person qualified to serve on grand and petit juries in the district court unless he (1) is not a citizen of the United States eighteen years old who has resided for a period of one year within the judicial district There are similar requirements in other states, for example in Washington, RCW 2.36.070 which includes being a citizen as a mandatory qualification. There are typically also age and residency requirement, requirements for competency in English, mental capacity also felon-exclusion provisions and charges-pending exclusions. The qualifications are jurisdiction-specific. Many people never serve on a jury, indeed many are never called to serve on a jury. There is no reliable count, but polling indicated that around 1/3 of adults have served on a jury.
I know of no specific provision of the Constitution that would forbid it. I know of no court case in which it has been found unconstitutional. There's no "irony" clause in the Constitution. Taxation without representation may have been a grievance, but there's no inherent reason why the framers would have had to forbid it. US citizens do still have the "freedom to expatriate" (and avoid taxation) if they renounce their citizenship. There are already other examples of "taxation without representation" in US law (e.g. District of Columbia), which also have not been found unconstitutional in court, as far as I know. In many cases, expatriates can still vote for federal offices, including Congress (e.g. in a state where they used to live, or where a parent used to live). See https://www.fvap.gov/citizen-voter/registration-ballots. The Sixteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to "lay and collect taxes" with few limitations. There is certainly no explicit exception for expatriates. As far as I can tell, it would be constitutional if Congress were to impose an income tax on everybody in the world, regardless of residency or citizenship; it would just be hard to enforce.