This week, Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera signed a bill into law that automatically registers its citizens to vote, which is expected to add 4.5 million people to Chile’s registration rolls. In doing so, the country joins many other democratic nations, including Australia, Canada, and France, that already have some form of automatic registration in place.
Unfortunately, the United States, where 35 percent of citizens — about 73.5 million — who are eligible to vote are not registered, does not have this policy in place. With such low registration rates, it is hard to imagine that in the last few years multiple laws have been approved across the country to restrict the ability of people to vote. In many states, there are even new burdens being placed specifically on the ability of community groups to register voters. One of the most onerous laws that passed was in Florida, and those restrictions are so severe that the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote had to suspend their voter registration drives.
Voting is not only a right, but a fundamental part of building an engaged citizenry and the foundation for civic participation. The Brennan Center advocates for a number of ways to modernize our country’s voter registration process that would be helpful to states to facilitate widespread registration. These provisions of voter registration modernization include automated registration (or automatically registering eligible citizens based on lists from other governmental agencies), online registration and access (being able to register to vote; or check, and edit one’s registration online), and permanent state registration (a voter’s registration record is moved as needed among jurisdictions within the state, but the voter is kept on the voter rolls as long as she resides in the state). All of these measures would effectively and efficiently improve voter registration, and enable more Americans to vote.
In addition to making our democracy more inclusive, voter registration modernization could make voting rolls more clean and accurate. The key is in sharing and comparing information between government agencies while moving away from the antiquated paper-based system on which most states rely. In too many states, a form has to get mailed to the county election office where it is hard-entered into the state voter registration database. This paper based systems is not only labor intensive, but also error prone, and can lead to numerous problems in the electoral process. These systems are also incredibly costly at a time when money is particularly tight in the states. Moving to a paperless system can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In Maricopa County, Arizona, they saved $450,000 by switching to online registration and partial automation, and in Delaware, they saved $200,000 just on personnel costs. Voter registration modernization has also gained bipartisan support around the country, as it is an area in which both parties can come together in the common goal of efficiency and cost reduction.
By following in the footsteps of many of the world’s developed democracies, Chile took an essential step toward modernizing its voter registration system. As a first-rate democracy the United States should do no less.
It’s official. With yesterday’s off-term elections now behind us, the one-year countdown to Election Day 2012 has officially begun.
One year is an awful lot of time for political campaigns. Candidates can thrive, perish, and come back to life in less time, particularly in today’s fast-paced media environment. But for election officials—many of whom are now tasked with educating the public about several recent changes to state voting laws—one year is not very much time at all.
That’s why these election officials must begin reaching out to voters right now to make sure they have all the information they need to cast ballots in next year’s election. With the rash of restrictive state voting laws that have passed in recent months—many of which impose burdensome new requirements on voters—state election administrators must work diligently to prepare voters for the 2012 election.
This will be especially important in states that have recently enacted strict voter ID laws. These laws, which typically require voters to show a valid government-issued photo ID at the polls, pose a significant barrier to electoral participation for the 11% of eligible voters who do not have such identification. These individuals will likely lose the chance to cast a meaningful ballot next November unless they obtain the necessary ID before then—regardless of whether they’d voted regularly in previous elections without an ID. Election administrators must therefore develop comprehensive voter education programs to inform these people about the new laws and show them how and where to obtain requisite photo IDs.
Unfortunately, state lawmakers and election administrators often underestimate the time and cost required to conduct effective voter education campaigns. In 2006, for instance, a federal court blocked initial enforcement of Georgia’s voter ID law after the state failed to commence its voter education program far enough in advance of the primary election to meaningfully inform voters of the new ID requirement. A recent analysis of Kansas’s new voter ID law concluded that lawmakers there had similarly underestimated the cost of public education efforts.
This problem doesn’t just apply to the new voter ID laws but also to other new voting restrictions. Maine lawmakers skimped on voter education funding this summer when they passed a bill to eliminate Election Day voter registration opportunities. Although the state’s Election Day registration policy had been in place for nearly four decades, state lawmakers nevertheless concluded that they could spend less than $3,000 to notify the state’s one million eligible voters about the changed rule (Maine voters approved a referendum yesterday repealing the new law).
Florida lawmakers went even further by passing a bill in May that actually cuts back on state funding sources for voter education. The bill—which also raises several new roadblocks for community-based voter registration drives—repealed a provision of Florida law that previously allocated revenue from fines for election-related violations to the state’s voter education budget. Worse still, the bill failed to allocate any new funding to inform the public about the new restrictions on voter registration activities. As a result, a pair of Florida high school teachers are now facing major fines for unwittingly breaking the new law by organizing voter registration drives for their students.
Although Florida’s bill provides an extreme example of neglect, election officials elsewhere are still struggling to reach voters most affected by the new voting restrictions. This is not surprising given that election budgets have been slashed in many states. And, even without the budget cuts, the voters who bear the greatest brunt of the new voting restrictions—namely, the poor, the elderly, people with disabilities, and people of color—are often the hardest to reach through traditional public education campaigns because of language barriers and diminished media access in their communities.
These difficulties highlight the need for more creative thinking—and more research—about how voters find information about election rules. Initiatives like the Voting Information Project, a Pew-sponsored partnership between election administrators and media companies like Google, illustrate the possibilities for future innovations in voter education. But they require greater buy-in from election officials. More importantly, they require broader recognition of the fact that voters’ familiarity with our new voting rules can influence democratic participation as much as the new rules themselves.
With less than a year to go until next year’s election—and primary elections just around the corner—election officials must not wait to begin educating voters about these new rules. The clock is ticking.
Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, with the help of members of the State Legislature, is seeking legislation that would give the state one of the most regressive laws in the nation when it comes to helping others register to vote.
S.B. 754, sponsored by State Senator Mark Jansen, is part of an 11-bill legislative package unveiled by Secretary Johnson last month called the Secure and Fair Elections Initiative (“SAFE”). The bill’s provisions, however, are neither safe nor fair, at least if one believes it should be possible to help another register to vote without risking criminal prosecution for failure to comply with a labyrinth of confusing and burdensome rules.
S.B. 754 contains a number of unreasonable and unnecessary restrictions on the ability of civic-minded individuals and organizations to help others register to vote. First, before registering anyone to vote, a “third-party voter registration organization” must register with the state, providing a name, address, and the name of a registered agent (for service of legal process) in the state. This information must be “promptly” updated whenever it changes, although “promptly” is not defined. For an individual, the registration procedure alone would be burdensome and confusing. For example, does an individual need a “registered agent” in order to help people register to vote? The bill is not clear.
Next, the individual (or a representative of an organization) must attend a state-run training program. The bill does not require that programs be run regularly or at convenient locations. After that, she must sign a statement advising the individual of applicable penalties for “false registration of electors.” Since false registration carries criminal penalties, this will require voter registration volunteers to sign documents scaring them with criminal prosecution before they can register voters. This will likely intimidate many from registering voters.
Once an individual or organization is finally allowed to register voters, things get even more difficult. The bill states that “third-party voter registration organizations” become “fiduciaries” of those whom they register to vote, and are required to “promptly” submit every completed registration form to the state. Again, “promptly” is not defined — no small concern since violating the law could trigger criminal penalties. Furthermore, if the voter registration application is collected within seven days of the registration deadline (when a large percentage of applications are submitted), the application must be submitted the next business day. This requirement will spook individuals who do not have a car, rely on others to travel, or are just plain busy, from registering voters. Organizations may be unable to ensure each of their representatives get all forms back to them, or to the state, within one day.
If the bill is passed, the effect on voter registration could be dramatic. Anyone who collected a voter registration application from another without first signing up with the state could be subject to criminal prosecution — even a parent helping her child. Elderly individuals who register others in residential care facilities could be considered criminals if they cannot get a ride to a Supervisor of Elections’ office the day after registering their neighbors. And organizations such as Rock the Vote and the League of Women Voters, which have registered millions of American citizens to vote, may have a hard time encouraging others to engage in this core democratic activity. The effects, of course, will fall hardest on young, low-income, and minority voters, who register through voter registration organizations at much higher rates than other citizens.
The suppressive effect of such legislation on voter registration is not theoretical. It has already occurred in Florida, where a law similar to the one proposed by Secretary Johnson was enacted last year. Rock the Vote and the League of Women Voters, which have spotless reputations and no record of fraud, have been forced to suspend their voter registration drives because of fear they will not be able to comply with the law’s requirements. Now, two teachers may be facing huge fines because they registered their students to vote, not knowing they were required to first register as a “third-party voter registration organization.”
Michigan is only the latest front in the nationwide war on voting. As a recent Brennan Center report shows, 21 new laws and executive actions in more than a dozen states will make it significantly harder for eligible citizens to register and vote. At least 44 bills are still pending, and these bills include provisions requiring photo ID and proof of citizenship to vote, cutting back on early and absentee voting, banning the restoration of voting rights to those with felony convictions, and, as here, making it harder to register to vote. All told, they could prevent up to 5 million Americans from voting. Almost uniformly, proponents of the legislation justify the bills with unsupported and generalized references to “voter fraud,” as Secretary Johnson has here. It is unclear, however, what this bill will do to prevent voter registration fraud, and it is virtually certain to suppress voter registration and participation.
The so-called “Secure and Fair Elections” initiative is unfair for voters and unsafe for democracy. Let’s hope Michigan rejects this latest attempt at voter suppression.
We’ve written much about the various voter IDbattles in the states, but recent legislative attacks on voting rights go far beyond introducing restrictive voter identification requirements.
In fact, legislators around the country have been pushing bills that make sweeping changes to their election codes to limit the voting rights of students and movers, reduce early voting days, and restrict voter registration and “get-out-the-vote” mobilization efforts.
Rather than making efforts to improve and modernize our election system and ensure that all eligible voters are able to vote, some lawmakers are instead trying to make voter registration and voting more difficult by effectively penalizing civic engagement.
Common characteristics of these bills, proposed by legislators in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, respectively, are that they are long, dense, and cover a wide variety of topics affecting access to the polls. In Texas, the legislative attack on voting has been done through a series of bills, which is bound to confuse citizens who must sift through a pile of proposed laws.
These bills are more than mere proposals of some overzealous legislators. The Florida bill became law last week, and Governor Scott Walker signed Wisconsin’s bill on Wednesday. Bills in North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas are still under consideration.
We provide a summary of these restrictive laws and bills below.
Florida
Florida’s House Bill 1355, a mammoth 158-page omnibus bill that was signed by the Governor Rick Scott on May 19th, includes language that would:
Require voter registration groups to pre-register every single volunteer or employee (by requiring each person to sign a sworn affidavit under penalty of perjury) and turn in every registration form they get within 48 hours or face strict penalties and fees
Eliminate Florida’s longstanding policy of allowing voters who have moved to update their new address at the polls on Election Day
Reduce the early voting period from two weeks to one
As the Brennan Center’s Lee Rowland wrote earlier, the pre-registration requirement means a student council member can’t swap in to take a turn to pass out registration forms without first signing a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, with the State. The tight turnaround time means that registration groups will be unable to follow up with voters who leave forms incomplete and will incur high fines for going a minute over the deadline.
The burdens of this bill will fall disproportionately on low-income and minority voters, renters, and students: eligible voters that already face the biggest hurdles to vote. And the groups that try to register these voters, from student organizers to the League of Women Voters, could be penalized for their attempts to bring more eligible citizens into our democracy.
The bill was signed by the Governor on May 19th despite urging from voting rights advocacy groups that the new law will only harm voters.
Ohio
Ohio, seemingly not wanting to be outdone by Florida, has a longer bill. Coming in at 297 pages, House Bill 194 is definitely competing with Florida in an imagined voter restrictions dance-off, perhaps to “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas, which was playing in the background of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s voter ID bill signing.
This bill is not all bad. Perhaps most importantly, it limits opportunities for unwarranted challenges at the polls that could be used to intimidate voters. It also makes it easier for people who change their names (i.e., recently married women) to vote a regular ballot.
But there are a number of new restrictions including:
Significantly reducing locations and times for early in-person voting
Prohibiting counties from sending absentee ballot applications to all registered voters or sending return postage on absentee ballots
Eliminating requirements that an election official must direct a voter who is in the wrong precinct to the voter’s correct precinct (which is especially crucial as provisional ballots only count if cast in the correct precinct)
Eliminating the ability of provisional voters to provide additional information or identification to ensure their ballots are counted in the 10 days after they voted
Discarding votes that the voting machine reads as “overvotes” (i.e., voting for more than one candidate in a contest), even when a subsequent review makes the voter intent clear
H.B. 194 does allow voters to electronically update their registration information online, which is a reform we support, but only if the voter already updated this information with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (meaning this will benefit far fewer voters than it could).
North Carolina
North Carolina has its own “Voting Integrity” bill, as it is short-titled. Instead of securing the election administration process in smart ways, Senate Bill 657 would undo some of North Carolina’s best voting practices by:
Cutting down the early voting period by one week
Ending pre-registration for 17 year-olds, which has become an important way to promote civic participation among young people
Repealing Same Day Registration (current law allows eligible voters to register to vote or update their registration information during the early voting period)
We are particularly troubled by the last two items. Eliminating Same Day Registration in North Carolina will discourage voters who already encounter other voter registration barriers from participating. The motivation behind eliminating pre-registration is unclear and unfairly punishes young voters who are lawfully eligible to vote.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin Assembly Bill 7 is widely known as a bill that would require Department of Transportation-issued photo ID, a passport, military or tribal ID, or naturalization certificate in order to vote. Student IDs could in theory be acceptable, but in practice, the ones that the University of Wisconsin currently issues would not be. The University will have to issue new cards to all students at an estimated cost of millions if it wants its IDs to be accepted as appropriate identification for voting under A.B. 7.
In the bill, there are also provisions to:
Extend the length of residency period before an eligible person may register to vote from 10 to 28 days
Move the deadline for a late registration to the Friday before an election, rather than the day before an election
A.B. 7 passed in a hasty vote, during which Senate President Mike Ellis cut off debate and declared the bill passed before all members of the Senate could cast their votes.
After the vote, Governor Scott Walker tweeted his glee. Walker signed the bill yesterday.
And then, there is Texas
Lone Star legislators did not seek to package their voting restrictions into one giant bill, defying the adage that everything is bigger in Texas. But there is still reason to be alarmed by what’s happening in Austin.
Priorities in Texas seem a bit misguided. For example, thanks to recently passed legislation, Texans will be able to legally “noodle,” the art of catching fish by hand. The author of the bill, State Senator Bob Deuell, is quoted as saying, “I personally don't noodle, but I would defend to the death your right to do so.”
No word on if he will defend to the death your right to vote.
On Thursday, the Florida Legislature declared war on voter registration. Both houses of the legislature passed a bill that takes the state a huge step backwards by making it harder to register voters, prohibiting registered voters who move before an election from updating their address at the polls, and greatly reducing early voting opportunities.
The burdens of Florida’s misguided elections bill will fall disproportionately on the shoulders of low-income and minority voters, renters, and students: eligible voters that already face the biggest hurdles to vote. And the groups that try to register these voters, from student organizers to the League of Women Voters, will be penalized for their attempts to bring more eligible citizens into our democracy.
Making Voter Registration Harder
Remember when church groups or boy scout troops could sign up new voters on a card table outside the supermarket? That civic participation will be a thing of the past if Florida lawmakers have their way. Registration groups will now have to pre-register every single volunteer or employee and turn in every registration form they get within 48 hours. And they’ll have to sign on to a new electronic database the state will set up to ensure that every voter registration group regularly submits updates on every registration card that every volunteer distributed at every registration drive they organized.
Pre-registration means a student council member can’t swap in to take a turn to pass out registration forms without first signing a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, with the state. The unbelievably tight turnaround time means that registration groups will be unable to follow up with voters who leave forms incomplete, and will incur high fines for going a minute over the deadline.
Registration groups have already started to indicate that they may just close up shop in Florida because they simply can’t navigate the onerous new burdens on registration drives. Who ends up getting hurt? Voters who these drives would otherwise register – and studies show that African-American and Latino voters are more than twice as likely to register in these drives.
Making Voting Harder
In addition, Florida is making it harder for voters who move to cast a ballot. Florida has a longstanding policy permitting voters who have changed their address before an election to update their new address at the polls on Election Day, where the voters’ existing registrations are carefully cross-checked in a state database before the voters are given a ballot. This bill eliminates that right, so that voters who move between Florida’s 67 counties will not have their vote counted.
To add insult to injury, the bill also chops in half the number of days when Floridians can vote by reducing early voting days from two weeks to one. Since its adoption, Florida’s early voting has been a resounding success with both elections officials and voters. Early voting periods have helped to spread out the crush of votes that election officials have to process, making electoral rhythms more manageable. Voters who in the past stood in long lines at voting precincts have experienced some relief; now, they can expect those lines to balloon again.
Even worse, this bill doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It follows closely on the Florida Clemency Board’s vote last month to revoke past Governor Crist’s reforms restoring the right to vote to nonviolent offenders who had paid their debt to society. The Board’s new policy creates a second class of up to a million Floridians with past criminal convictions who are working and living in their communities but have no voice in their democracy. A full quarter of these individuals are African-American.
Penalizing Civic Engagement
Rather than making it more convenient for eligible voters to cast a ballot, Florida has instead erected new barriers to the voting booth. If and when Governor Scott signs this bill, Florida will rise to the head of the class when it comes to penalizing civic engagement. Florida politicians seem to believe that voting is a privilege reserved for the few – not for students, minority voters, or voters who move. Our nation has taken long strides to expand the franchise and eliminate the shadows of Jim Crow; unfortunately, Florida has just taken a giant – and ugly – step backwards.
The 2010 midterm election is one week away. Amidst media coverage of Tea Party mobilization, unprecedented independent campaign spending, and political mudslinging, an important trend has received relatively little attention: declining voter registration rates.
It is not surprising that voter registration would be down from 2008— presidential elections typically generate higher levels of interest than midterm elections. According to data obtained by the Brennan Center, however, voter registration across the nation in 2010 is down considerably from registration prior to the 2006 and 2002 midterm elections. In Ohio, a perennial swing state, 671,642 individuals registered to vote between 2009 and 2010, compared to 896,053 in the two years preceding the 2006 midterm election— a 25% decrease. Similarly, the Florida Division of Elections reports only 267,933 new registrations in 2010 compared to 370,190 in 2006— a 27% decrease. New voter registrations in Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin in 2010 are also down compared to the same time period in 2006: 35% in Indiana; 21% in Maryland; 28% in North Carolina; 17% in Tennessee; and 43% in Wisconsin.
In 2010, as in the last few elections, voter registration is the number one barrier to voting. As a prerequisite to voting, registration is a crucial step in the democratic process. Unfortunately, burdensome registration deadlines, confusing residency requirements and improper voting list purges, among other problems, impede the process.
In 2008, around 3 million people tried but were unable to vote because of voter registration issues. This election cycle the registration problem is even more pronounced— there are far fewer efforts to register voters than there have been in recent election years as a result of new and onerous state laws, decreased funding, and public attacks against registration groups. Brennan Center research also suggests that a significant number of states do not fully comply with federal voter registration laws— in particular, the address change requirements of National Voter Registration Act (‘NVRA’). In addition to violating the component of the NVRA mandating registration at DMV offices, many states also fail to register voters at public assistance agencies. As a result of this noncompliance, voter registration applications from public assistance agencies fell 62 percent from the initial implementation in 1995-1996 to the latest reporting period, 2007-2008.
What does this mean for the 2010 election? As data collected by the Brennan Center indicates, the difference in voter registration in 2006 and 2010 is staggering. These differences not only have huge implications for election-day outcomes— numerous races in the past decade have been decided by a handful of votes and in several 2010 races the margin between candidates is less than 1%— but also speak more generally to our need to modernize voter registration and energize voters. Voting is both a right and a responsibility, but there is no reason to complicate the process unnecessarily, especially since the tools for implementing a modern voter registration system are readily available.
For more information about possible voting barriers in the 2010 election, please see: Brennan Center’s National Press Club presentation on Threats to the Vote in 2010.
Yesterday, at a ceremony presided over by Chief Justice John
Roberts, the U.S. Postal Service issued
a series of new stamps
honoring the most influential Supreme Court Justices, among them Justice William J.
Brennan, Jr. The stamp commemorating
Justice Brennan is a welcome and well-deserved tribute; it's impossible to name
any judges who cared about our democracy more than Justice Brennan did.
The new Justice Brennan stamp is a tremendous honor. There's another move the postal service could
make, though, which would have a significant effect on the American democracy
so dear to Justice Brennan's heart - and all it would take is a simple,
clerical change to one of the postal service's most frequently used forms. By
making a small tweak to its national change
of address form, the postal service could make American elections function
more efficiently and eliminate problems for millions of Americans on Election
Day. This easy step would be a
meaningful tribute to Justice Brennan, whose judicial decisions uniformly
sought to protect the fundamental right to vote, including his opinion in the
landmark case Baker v. Carr, which opened the door
for courts to protect the "one-person, one-vote" principle.
One of the biggest challenges facing election administrators
is the need to ensure that voters' registration records contain up-to-date,
accurate information, including address information. Doing so isn't easy because tens of millions
of Americans - as many as one in six - move
every year. In any five-year period,
approximately 45 percent of the U.S.
population moves. All this moving poses
big challenges for election administrators - and voters.
Under the current system of voter registration, voters who
move must re-register every time their address changes by sending election
officials an old fashioned, paper form.
Every time there's an election, a flood of these forms are submitted
just before the registration deadline.
This consumes a big percentage of election administrators' resources:
address updates account for about a third of all voter registration
transactions and, unsurprisingly, election officials report that dealing with
address changes is the most challenging aspect of voter list maintenance. Processing so many forms results in errors
with voters' registrations, as temporary clerks enter data hand-written on
paper forms into states' registration lists.
These problems could be reduced significantly if election
officials had a tool to update voters' addresses in their registration records
on a rolling basis, not right before Election Day when the paper forms flood
in. The postal service's change of
address form could be this tool - if postal officials just added a single question. All they need to do is ask people if the
address changes they submit to the post office are just temporary changes for
mail forwarding, or should be used to update their permanent voting addresses. The postal service already collects
information on address changes. It
wouldn't be difficult to ask one more question about voting residence and share
the information voters submit with election officials.
A simple checkbox would do the job: "Check this box if you do not want to change the address where you are registered
to vote. Unless you check this box, your
address change will be reported to your state's election agency."
Because the change of address form doesn't currently ask
about voting address, election officials are often reluctant to rely on postal
data to update voters' records. This
makes sense, since there are plenty of reasons voters might want to have their
mail forwarded without changing their permanent voting address - like when a
member of the armed
forces is assigned to a new location but intends to eventually return to
his or her permanent voting address.
Letting voters specify changes to their voting address would let
election administrators know when voters had - and hadn't - moved their voting
residence. This way, the voters' records
could be updated ahead of Election Day, eliminating the eleventh hour scramble
to correct old registration information at the last minute.
Some states already use postal data to update the addresses
of voters who move. Minnesota, for example, revised its election code
in 2008, and now uses postal data to update the addresses of voters who move
either within or outside the state.
Similarly, Oregon conducts regular,
bi-annual cross-checks of postal change of address data to update address
information for voters who have moved - a particularly important task in Oregon, which votes
entirely by mail. But given the current
change of address form, states like Minnesota
and Oregon
must do follow-up investigations to determine which mailing address changes
should also serve as voting address updates, a task that adds expense and
delays, and introduces opportunities for errors. Adding the check-box would address these
concerns.
The postal service should also
provide election officials with change of address data free of charge - or at
least at cost. Laws in more than half
the states currently authorize election officials to update address information
based on postal data. But some officials
don't do so because of the cost of obtaining the data. Requiring that the postal service furnish
election officials with address data at little or no cost will reduce the costs
of updating voter data and produce more accurate voter rolls.
Since the historic 2008
election, a chorus
of voices has been calling for reforms of the voter registration system
that will bring
that system into the twenty-first century.
A simple change by the postal service could significantly aid in this
process, improving our voter registration system and ensuring accurate voter
rolls. It would be a welcome
contribution to a modern voter registration system in which accurate data from
various government sources is provided to election officials, improving
administrative efficiency and eliminating Election Day problems that stem from
registration errors.
Making this change would go a
long way to ensuring that citizens' votes' don't go uncounted because of out of
date registrations or clerical errors in their registration records. That would be a fitting tribute to Justice
Brennan, and all those who share his vision of a fully enfranchised society.
We talk about promoting
democracy around the world, but neglect the infrastructure of our own
democracy. This is most visible in our antiquated voter registration
system.
Voter registration is the gateway to voting. But our registration
system relies on 19th century practices, and, leaves millions of
eligible voters out of the political process. Recent Census reports show that 30% of eligible Americans aren't registered to vote. Most major democracies do far better; a recent Brennan Center study
of voter registration systems around the world shows that Canada,
France, Germany, and Great Britain each register well over 90% of their
eligible citizens.
Voter apathy does not explain our low registration rates. In the
2008 elections, 2 to 3 million eligible Americans attempted to vote,
but were thwarted by voter registration problems; an additional 9
million were unable to register because of registration deadlines or
residency rules, Professor Stephen Ansolabehere of Harvard and MIT testified before the Senate Rules Committee this year. Voter protection hotlines consistently say voter registration is the problem would-be voters report most often. And election officials report that registration problems are the number one reason that provisional ballots are not counted.
So why do we lag so far behind other countries in voter
registration? Unlike other major democracies, the United States places
the onus of voter registration on individual citizens. Plus, our system
is based principally on paper forms, which compounds the problem. Every
voter, every time they move, must fill out new forms which must then be
delivered to appropriate election officials, deciphered, processed, and
entered into a database; the forms typically arrive together in huge
volumes, right before an election. This system is ripe for error,
duplication, and waste; worse, the system ends up disenfranchising
millions of eligible voters.
It doesn't have to be this way. Our study of twenty voter
registration systems around the world -- the most comprehensive such
study to date -- finds that in nearly every democracy surveyed,
government helps assure that every eligible citizen is registered to
vote. Only four countries other than the United States -- the Bahamas,
Belize, Burundi, and Mexico -- place the burden of voter registration
on individual citizens.
Other democracies use a variety of methods to register voters, but
the most common method -- and one which is readily adoptable here -- is
by compiling lists of unregistered eligible citizens from other
government lists. Canada, which has a decentralized federal system
similar to ours, automatically adds every 18-year-old and other
citizens to its voter rolls using information from other government
agencies. And, it continually updates voter records with data from
other government agencies, a practice followed in several other
countries. To insure government mistakes don't prevent any one from
voting, Canada has a procedure for citizens to register or update
registrations on Election Day. Less than 7% of Canadians are
unregistered, in contrast with 30% of Americans, and the vast majority
of the records on the Canadian voter rolls -- unlike ours -- are
accurate and up-to-date.
This common-sense approach -- automatic registration, permanent
registration through electronic updates, and an Election Day list
correction procedure -- would add 50 to 65 million eligible voters to
the registration rolls here; it would also save taxpayers money and
ensure our voter rolls are more accurate and less susceptible to fraud
and manipulation. Canada and Australia both substantially reduced their
election costs when they modernized their voter rolls -- and, they
recouped their low transition costs almost immediately.
Can this be achieved in the United States? Absolutely -- and it
wouldn't even take that long. States already have the necessary
infrastructure -- centralized voter registration databases and
government agency lists
capable of electronically sharing information. With a minor upgrade to
our registration system, states can use reliable and accurate
information in other government databases to automatically add eligible
citizens to the voter lists and keep their information current.
That is how many other countries build their voter rolls, and it is
also largely how the U.S. Selective Service System creates its list.
Fail-safe procedures before and on Election Day will ensure that any
government mistakes are caught and corrected.
There is the political will to do this: election officials and political actors of all stripes support voter registration modernization. In the June 25th issue of The Washington Post,
the chief lawyers of both the Obama and McCain campaigns editorialized
in favor of modernizing the registration system -- a reform that
addresses the concerns of both major parties. The Senate Rules
Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Schumer, has already held a hearing
on the problems with the voter registration system. Now is the time for
Congress to take the next step to solve those problems and make voter
registration modernization a priority this year.
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