Voting Rights Not Guaranteed By Inclusion in Street Listing

The head of the Cambridge Election Commission said yesterday that students who include their names in the City's official street listing of Cambridge inhabitants are not assured of being allowed to register to vote here.

Commissioner Francis P. Burns's statement coincided with efforts by Dean Epps to distribute street listing cards to all undergraduates.

Those who return completed cards by May 30 will appear in the 1973 listing of Cambridge inhabitants. A statement by Epps which accompanied the cards said, "Failure to complete and return this card may make it more difficult for you to register to vote in Cambridge if you should seek to do so."

Burns said that inclusion of one's name in the street listing was only helpful in establishing physical presence in Cambridge. "For someone to register to vote here, he must demonstrate that he considers Cambridge his home and that he has no present intention of leaving the City," Burns said.

Burns said that the City accepts a wide variety of evidence, in addition to street listings, as proof of physical presence in Cambridge. Rent receipts, telephone bills and listings in the Harvard student directory are sufficient to prove physical presence, he said.

Anyone who seeks to be included in the street listing signifies merely that he wishes to be considered a resident of Cambridge, Burns said. "Inclusion in the listing doesn't establish residency," he said. Burns added that students who do not seek to be included in the listing will not be presumed to be claiming residency in another city.

Georgina Duckey Field '69, a voter registration counselor at the Office of Graduate and Career Plans, said yesterday that inclusion in the street listing does not affect a student's taxes and automobile registration. "Students don't have to worry about those things until they come to register to vote," she said.

Field said that this is the first year that Harvard has made street listing forms available to undergraduates. Last year, when few students were included on the street listing, 16 out of 100 Harvard applicants were permitted to register to vote, she said.

Dean Epps ordered 6000 street listing cards from the Election Commission for use at Harvard after the commission asked Harvard to distribute the cards to all students living on campus.