Lawmakers Push for National Same-Day Registration

There has been bad news on voting rights lately, so this is particularly welcome:

Minnesota and Wisconsin lawmakers are seeking legislation that would require states to let people register to vote on the same day that a federal election is held.

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, along with Senator Amy Klobuchar and Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, plan to introduce the bill on Thursday. The lawmakers, all Democrats, say that same-day registration will encourage more people to vote.

Here's Feingold's comment:

"Election Day registration has worked well in Wisconsin for more than 30 years and is a major reason why Wisconsin is a national leader in voter turnout. By allowing people to register in person on Election Day, we can bring more people into the process, which only strengthens our democracy."

This will probably go nowhere in Congress, for obvious reasons: every time voting gets easier, more young voters, minority voters, and low-income voters turn out. And that means more Democratic votes, something Republicans will find all sorts of phony reasons to reject.

In a more perfect country we would do everything we could to get as many people involved as possible, regardless of age, race, or income. That means we would vote on weekends, over the course of a week, or on a national holiday. Registration would be allowed at the polling site. Absentee voting would be allowed without cause. And maybe, just maybe, we'd be able to vote online.

Comments

It would be wonderful if all the citizens of the United States, in all states, would be able to register and vote at the polls. Hopefully, this democratic law will be enacted.

Registration at the polls would make it possible for all CITIZENS who have fallen through the DLC and REPUBLICAN'S large economic cracks, for one reason or another, to not be discounted as citizens, and give ALL CITIZENS hope for a better tomorrow.

True, real REPUBLICANS will not go along with democracy. It is time for the lumpen-proletariat REPUBLICANS, or Republicans who can't live off their capital investments, to come out of the REPUBLICAN PARTY and realize the REPUBLICAN PARTY is not for the 70% majority common population, so that democracy for all Americans will not be totally destroyed.

Posted by: MarthaA on 05/02/08 at 10:44 AM Respond

Other election reforms, notably the Voting Rights Act, took multiple tries to pass, so there's no reason not to try as many years as it takes on this one. In fact, almost all election fraud involves registration rolls, and would be beatable if registration at the polls was allowed. That would end the problems with placebo ballots, throwing out registration cards for not matching some other database, purging voters after misidentifying them as felons, and challenges through caging lists.

Lawmakers Push for National Same-Day Registration

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