Anthony Simescu is a senior at Colby College studying government and economics and co-leads Colby Votes, the college’s nonpartisan GOTV initiative.

I used to believe, as fellow Colby student Cleo Rehkopf argued in a recent op-ed, that a person without a long-term stake in a community has little business shaping its politics.

Already registered in a Houston-area suburb my family had moved to for a job four years prior, I saw no reason to register in Waterville once I arrived at Colby College on a full-tuition scholarship, a place I would leave after four years by design, rather than by happenstance.

It seemed defensible enough: vote from where you inherit a future, not from a place you’re only passing through. But then I started thinking more about the reality of my own transience, and whether this argument might undercut itself.

The legal question, at least, is settled. In Carrington v. Rash, the Supreme Court rejected Texas’ attempt to categorically exclude servicemembers partly because of their supposedly transient character. In Dunn v. Blumstein, it rejected lengthy durational-residency requirements and specifically distinguished bona fide residence from assumptions that longtime residents have a greater “common interest” in community affairs.

But my peer’s argument is not a legal one — it’s a moral one. It is, roughly put, that while residence may make participation legal, long-term stake should influence whether casting one’s ballot is morally appropriate. But how does this work in practice?

My own case raises a useful boundary test: I have no plans to remain in Texas upon graduation, and none to remain in Maine either. That raises the question: if it is immoral for me to vote in Texas and in Maine, then where should I vote?

Per Rehkopf’s argument, I should not vote anywhere. I would be politically homeless, civis non gratus, a man without a country.

Some might say that’s simply the correct outcome: settle first, vote later. But that standard costs more than it seems. Anyone without a fixed place, from students like myself to military families, would forfeit a voice for years, precisely when their lives are least settled and they may most need representation.

Granted, student connections to Waterville vary. One student might spend four years almost entirely within the campus bubble. But another might live downtown more than nine months of the year, work at Holy Cannoli, volunteer at the Alfond Youth & Community Center, buy flowers from The Robin’s Nest, dine at The Proper Pig, play pool at You Know Whose, frequent the library and lease a house off-campus (as many Colby sports teams do).

Rehkopf acknowledges that students build these real, everyday connections, yet insists they still lack a true “stake” without a guarantee of staying long-term. But living in a town, paying sales taxes, patronizing local businesses and navigating community spaces is a present stake. Dismissing these lived connections simply because they carry an eventual expiration date reduces civic membership to a mere real estate commitment.

There’s also a conceptual inconsistency in her proposed alternative: she objects to voting somewhere you “may not even be living in now,” yet recommends voting where you grew up, which, for most college students, is precisely a place they no longer live. Families move, too. I was born in Portland, Oregon, still have the same area code and consider it “home,” but I haven’t lived there in seven years and couldn’t vote there if I tried.

Between my dual citizenship, my West Coast upbringing, my Texas high school years and my time at Colby, no single fact delineates which place is my true community, and thus where it would be moral for me to cast my ballot. People belong to several communities at once, and modern mobility makes “community” much messier than simply “hometown versus college town.” Her argument is anachronistic in assuming a rootedness that air travel and a mobile economy have made the exception, not the rule. Fewer people can afford to stay for generations in one place, and it isn’t obvious why political membership should depend on having done so.

This November, I will cast my ballot in Maine, not to “tip the scales,” but because this is where I currently live and am governed. Critics often point to local flashpoints like Waterville’s 2019 plastic bag referendum, decided by just 146 votes with 161 student and faculty ballots cast, as proof that transient voters distort municipal outcomes. But Colby students and faculty are shopping with these bags, paying these fees and living under this ordinance every day.

Treating student participation in local referendums as a distortion rather than a legitimate constituency navigating current laws assumes a town belongs only to those who never leave. Such a view favors stasis; democracy, less so.

But step back from ties, local referendums and identity confusion for a moment — ultimately, none of it should disqualify a voter. The moral basis for a vote was never about future stake. It rests on subjection: an idea older than our country itself, that those bound by a government’s laws are entitled to a voice in making them.

Waterville’s laws bind every Colby student today. Its police and fire departments answer for them today. Its decisions serve or fail them today, no matter the address they will hold in four years. Subjection, not future stake, is what morally grounds my vote.

So, to any out-of-state students considering voting here come November: don’t let uncertainty about where you truly “belong” talk you out of doing so.