“Universal voter registration?”
Here’s your Monday night water cooler topic: Check out the new drive for universal voter registration. Reader Mark Jackson sent the story link with his comment: “This has vote fraud written all over it.”
The nation’s much-maligned election system passed a major test last week when more than 132 million Americans — a record — cast ballots with few reports of problems.
But now, election reformers are calling for a move toward a “universal voter registration” system, in which the government takes the lead in ensuring that all eligible citizens are registered to vote.
“This means the registration process would no longer serve as a barrier to the right to vote,” said Wendy R. Weiser, a lawyer for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “It would also eliminate the ACORN issue and all the gaming of the system.”
In the United States, unlike other major democracies, citizens, not the government, are responsible for seeing to it that they are registered to vote. And when people move, even if across town, they must update their registration, usually with a local office.
In 2004, more than 1 in 4 American adults was not on the voter rolls. Since then, private organizations such as the League of Women Voters and activist groups like ACORN, an advocate for people in low-income communities, launched major voter registration drives. These groups do not put voters on the rolls. They simply turn in applications from people who sign forms saying they want to register.
But ACORN, among others, was sharply criticized for submitting a huge number of registration cards with questionable information and from people already registered.
“All across America, our people wasted untold hours dealing with duplicate registrations,” said R. Doug Lewis, executive director of the National Assn. of Election Officials.
Many more Americans encounter a more mundane problem — failing to update their registration after they move.
“The current system is simply not designed for a mobile society,” the Brennan Center for Justice said in its report on universal voter registration.
Under its proposal, states could update their computerized voter rolls when residents move from one city to another. And they could add new voters who move to the state and apply for driver’s licenses.
Some proposals would automatically add teens to the voter rolls when they turn 18. Under some plans, Congress could create a national voter registration roll, modeled after the Social Security database.
Automatic, mandatory voter registration and tracking strikes me not only as a bureaucratic nightmare, but also ideologically unsound. I’m with John Stossel: Some people just shouldn’t be voting. Leave ‘em alone.
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Trackbacks
- Just What We Needed: “Universal Voter Registration” | The American Pundit
- Michelle Malkin and John Stossel Don’t Want You to Vote — The Opposite of Jim Bunning
- The clear answer to voter registration fraud « Cadillac Tight
- Webloggin » This Plan Merits Discussion
- Kick the Anthill » Audacity & Arugula Update
- Why Not Just Go Universal Everything? « The Truth Tracker
- Can the Democracy Index cause election reform? @ The Democratic Piece
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If someone is too lazy, disinterested, or stupid to register to vote why the hell should they be allowed to vote without taking the 5-10 minutes it takes to register? I now realize why the foundering fathers considered only letting land owners vote when writing the US Constitution. I am personally leaning to allow only those with a valid DD 214 (they bet with their lives on this country) or those that can prove they actually paid taxes (they are the producers) instead of the welfare bums that only vote for the crooks that will give them the most handouts.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE (mo-lone lah-veh) Translation: Come and take them!
At least they are not too lazy, disinterested, or stupid to figure out sex! They keep breeding and multiplying. It is a good thing we conservatives support this by being anti-abortion, and then supplying welfare to “god’s children”. We are one smart and noble group of soon to be extinct conservative dinosaurs!
Michelle, Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, after I had been out late the night before, I don’t feel like brushing my teeth and getting dressed. Do you think that the government can start a new agency to help me brush my teeth and get dressed on the days that I feel too tired to do it by myself?
We can call it the “Aid to somnolitic People Act”.
I’m not sure, but I think I’m Malkinoid. I got an official call from the Office of the President Elect…they want to reprogram my embedded chip.
Absolutely correct. By every means necessary to defeat the “EVIL” Republicans.
It’ll get down to abolishing registration altogether. It just disenfranchises too many potential voters. Just appear at the polling place and vote. No questons asked, as long as you vote Democrat.
What election was this guy watching?
And there lies the rub! We elected someone who believes we don’t need to be resposible.
You don’t get it. Dividing the electoral votes is no different than eliminating the Electoral College altogether. When will we realize that the Framers were smarter than we are?
On November 11th, 2008 at 11:40 am, harbormaster said:
And there lies the rub! We elected someone who believes we don’t need to be resposible.
I disagree with you Harbormaster. It is not that Obama believes that personal responsibility is not needed. It is that he wants Americans to act irresponsibly; especially when it comes to critically evaluating government policies. There is a difference.
Meanwhile, on the big-mouthed stupid Hollywood types front…
Tim Robbins doesn’t know where he’s supposed to vote…hasn’t done so recently, but got a court fricking order allowing him to vote where he shouldn’t.
That’s right. Whatever you do, do NOT go after the frauds and criminals such as ACORN and the like. No, no no. That would mean that you would be enforcing the laws that are already on the books. Let’s go ahead and create yet ANOTHER beurocratic nightmare, write more and more laws and allow the guilty to go unpunished. Otherwise, there will be no way for them to corrupt a system that has seen country after struggling, emerging country go through hell trying to copy/imitate due to the way it has worked here for over 200 years…
Worked, that is, until the Liberals and Democrats decided that they required criminals and dead people to vote in order to get elected and thus felt the need to corrupt the system.
This election alone has proven that there are a great number of people in this country that have no business…and even less intellect…to vote.
Rather than create this “Universal Registration”, how about just make it mandatory to show your State issued Identification, and maybe, just maybe, a simple test that demonstrates the most remedial knowledge in this country and the items that are on the ballot.
I know the test is probably forever off the table…but come on…if you are intimidated by someone asking you to show your ID that proves you are who you say you are…then maybe you should not be voting in the first place and definitely have a great deal that you are hiding.
Oh…that date the Libs and Dems started to corrupt the system began with the Kennedy Election of 1960 and re-emerged in 2000 with every election since seeing them work very hard at perfecting it.
harbor, uh, yes I do get it. My vote is not accounted for here in Cal due to the fact that this is a “winner takes all” state. Given the majority are dems Cal always goes to the dem candidate. You see why the system needs to be changed? Otherwise, why should Republicans even show up to vote for their candidate? Quite simple actually so I am not sure why you don’t “get it”.
I guess ACORN will need a bailout now. What will all those voter reg people do? Those poor under-privileged people, they will starve! It’s sad.
Oh wait, that’s right; they will get Union (no secret ballot for you!) jobs as over-paid, under-worked bureaucrats who look at your private records on a whim. Yea, that’s the ticket.
It would be funny if it were not so tragic.
Right, I tried this back in 06 here iN WV after I moved, and changed my Drivers license. Sad because they failed to turn in the forms.
Except the Constitution is silent on how the states choose electors. It’s only by custom that most states award their electors to thw winner of the popular vote. Even today, two states are not winner-take-all. In fact there is no requirement at all that the electors be chosen by any vote of the people. If a state wanted to, it could have its own legislature delegate electors for us.