voter registration

[cellio]

With all the drives to get people registered to vote in time for the November election, and at least one state reportedly headed to court over deadlines (caused, apparently, by Columbus Day being a holiday), I've been wondering... why do we even need voter registration today? (Aside from preserving some government jobs, I mean.) What's wrong with saying: show up at the poll in your assigned location, show proof of citizenship and of residence, be checked against a list of people who can't vote (mainly people who've already voted, but I think felons can't vote?), and vote. Since voting is districted, election officials can make sure any no-vote list is distributed to the right places in advance -- no Internet connection required. From there, it's just checking that the person is in the right polling place and hasn't already been here. Nobody has to have done paperwork in advance; everybody who's eligible and wants to gets to vote. Wouldn't this enfranchise more voters than the current system?

(You already have to give your name when you show up to vote and be checked off the list, so there's no privacy issue that isn't already present.)

Comments

[eub.livejournal.com]

"Motor Voter" voting registration basically does what you're asking, gets whatever database lookups done behind the scenes without a person making a separate request. The problem is the Republican Party expects that if more people voted, they would lean Democrat.

That aside, why is there any voter registration to be done in any way, at the DMV or not? I imagine it as precalculation of the answer to "person X is eligible to vote in location Y" so it doesn't all have to be evaluated on Election Day. I don't know how much is involved in evaluating that, but even if it's pretty simple, it would be a challenge to design the backing database systems so that they can handle the unpredictable high loads at 99.999+%

[cellio]

"Motor voter" -- yes, for people who have driver's licenses, which isn't everybody. But that just adds a wrapper around the processing; it doesn't improve the back end.

Part of the point of bringing proof of citizenship (not just a driver's license, which anybody can get) is that the checks were done when you obtained that, so at the polling place they should only need to check that you live there (look at the address on your pay stub, utility bill, tax return, or whatever) and haven't voted yet.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

"Show proof of residence and citizenship" = "require ID to vote"

[cellio]

Why is that a problem?

I know that's a hot-button question, and it's not my hot button; this is an honest question, not rhetoric. When I've asked people this before, the most coherent answer I've gotten is that obtaining state ID is a burden, particularly as you have to go to a particular place to renew it every four years. Proof of citizenship you can obtain once in your life, and proof of residence is easier than ID -- it comes to you. (Perhaps we'd need a subsidized/free way to obtain proof of citizenship, like the voter-ID folks have proposed for their initiatives.)

I don't understand the burden argument, but I'll grant it for the sake of discussion. How do people without any ID get jobs, leases, credit cards, bank accounts, library cards, school enrollment, or the ability to travel?

[alienor.livejournal.com]

Proof of citizenship may be issued under a different name from the person's legal name (for example, after marriage or a gender change). So you're requiring people who are already marginalized to go through an additional step.

Proof of residence comes to you - unless you rent a room (utilities included) because you are too poor to own/rent your own place. Or maybe you're couch surfing and between jobs (so no bills). Or you're married and your husband insists on controlling all of the bills.

Jobs, leases, credit cards, bank accounts, library cards, school enrollment, or the abilities to travel are not things that everyone has access to, nor are they American rights. Voting is.

[devreux.livejournal.com]

"How do people without any ID get jobs, leases, credit cards, bank accounts, library cards, school enrollment, or the ability to travel?"

Well, mostly they don't. Not having ID does relegate one to an underclass that lacks access to many of the things that you and I take for granted as being normal and necessary parts of day-to-day life. But in this country, being in that underclass is not correlated with lacking the right to vote.

[cellio]

Every citizen has the right to vote, absolutely.

It's puzzling to me that a citizen would remain shut out of things like legal employment instead of obtaining the ID. I get that the relevant offices might be hard to get to or the hours challenging (if, say, you have young children and no one else to take care of them), but it just seems like somehow solving that problem once could open so many doors -- what else is blocking people in this situation? What other barriers need to be knocked down?

[siderea]

It's puzzling to me that a citizen would remain shut out of things like legal employment instead of obtaining the ID.

I think maybe you have the order of operations backwards. For someone who (believes, perhaps erroneously) that they are shut out of legal employment (such as someone with a criminal record) or has no intention of pursuing legal employment (e.g. SAHM), can't get a lease (because of poor credit) or a credit card or bank account (ditto), and doesn't travel out of the country....

Well, at that point, getting an ID is basically registering to vote, if an ID can be used for voting, only with having to present a bunch of other documentation and pay whatever your state's fee is.

(I don't think I've ever been required to present ID to get a civil library card. I have a hazy recollection of presenting a bill to establish residence for the BLP.)

I see the appeal of your proposal, myself. There's an obvious compromise: let anybody who wants register the old fashioned way, and let anybody who wants do the ID thing. I'd be concerned that having to have one's papers in order to vote will reduce turnout by adding a logistical speedbump, but okay.

I think, however, the real objection to doing away with registration is actually tied up in that lack of a privacy problem you mention.

There was recently an online discussion I read about why voter rolls are public information, and a number of commenters were of the opinion that the whole post-rolls-outside-polling-places-in-advance practice was to give the community a chance to see if there were invented names on it. "Hey, there's no #24 on Main Street! I'm in 23 and the Smiths are right next to me in 25!" I don't know if this is true, or post-hoc rationalization. I don't know if election officials consider the voting rolls being public to be an important principle or something.

But a key consequence of your ID scheme is that they wouldn't be able to do that any more.

ETA: Oh, I just thought of the other thing they wouldn't be able to do: mail the voters. They mail me official notifications of elections – a post card – which includes the official notification of where they've put my polling place this time. Also, for big elections like this, we all get shipped a booklet about who and what will be on the ballot. (And mine has not shown up and this reminds me I should go get one. ETA2: my bad, I just found it. I regret the slight upon Secretary Galvin's honor.)

[cellio]

There was recently an online discussion I read about why voter rolls are public information, and a number of commenters were of the opinion that the whole post-rolls-outside-polling-places-in-advance practice was to give the community a chance to see if there were invented names on it.

Oh, interesting! Doubly -- I've never seen the rolls posted like that, but you're right that if they're public, registration allows scrutiny that my proposal wouldn't. Think of the public service that could be done if the folks pursuing voter ID instead pursued validating already-public information.

ETA: Oh, I just thought of the other thing they wouldn't be able to do: mail the voters.

That never occurred to me because I do not recall ever having received official election-related mail (other than my voter-registration card). No notices of elections, no booklets -- heck, they don't even mail us the text of ballot initiatives or proposed (state) constitutional amendments. Most people vote just based on the one-liner summary that appears on the ballot, which is not neutrally written (cringe). (It's written by whoever wrote the legislation.) This year I've actually seen notices (with full text) in print newspapers, but if you don't get a newspaper this information is pull, not push.

ETA: I had to show my driver's license to get a library card here in Pittsburgh (Carnegie Library). You also have to show ID to fly anywhere in the US, though granted that's not an activity that's likely to be relevant to those of limited means.

[siderea]

I've never seen the rolls posted like that,

!!! I have no idea if we're still doing it; the last time I remember seeing that done for sure was a few years ago. Thing is, I'm no longer habituating any of my local polling places, so if they are posting them I'm not there to see it. The senior center a half-block down from techjob was a polling place (not mine) and I saw rolls posted there back when I worked there.

Back in 1990, I was walking back to my dorm from the grocery store, and saw the rolls posted at my polling place, which was a fire station. There were IIRC three names registered at my street address, which was a dorm of 45 beds and the housemaster's apartment. I... may have stomped around the dorm a bit explaining that people who didn't register to vote locally didn't get to whinge about the lack of unmetered onstreet parking around the dorm. (Last time I was through there before an election, I was pleased to see my old dorm well represented on the rolls.)

That never occurred to me because I do not recall ever having received official election-related mail (other than my voter-registration card). No notices of elections, no booklets -- heck, they don't even mail us the text of ballot initiatives or proposed (state) constitutional amendments. Most people vote just based on the one-liner summary that appears on the ballot, which is not neutrally written (cringe). (It's written by whoever wrote the legislation.) This year I've actually seen notices (with full text) in print newspapers, but if you don't get a newspaper this information is pull, not push.

Your state isn't doing a very good job at this democracy thing. :)

[cellio]

Your state isn't doing a very good job at this democracy thing. :)

Yeah. But somehow our elected representatives manage to send out "newsletters" (at taxpayer expense of course). No no, those couldn't possibly be thinly-veiled ads from incumbents; that would be illegal. They're just, you know, news. Well, words on paper, with suitable spin. Um...

[goljerp]

That's easy, though - you can spam the "newsletters" to all addresses within a district. Sending materials only to registered voters means you have to actually do a mail merge from your database. It could take days to set up the punch cards for that!

[goljerp]

It's a darn good thing that my local election board mails us booklets with our polling places, because they keep on changing! So far in the last 3 years, I think there have been 3 different polling places for us, and they keep on moving slightly further from our apartment. I shouldn't complain too much, because they're all within a few blocks of home. I guess it's due to living in a city where the election districts have been redrawn. (I can't just walk to a local polling place, because there are several polling places within a few blocks of home which aren't mine.)

On the other hand, there were complaints in NYC about a mailing which was a bit misleading (it said something like next state primary on the YYYth of XXXXX, but before that was another primary which I guess they weren't thinking of when they made the mailing?)

[siderea]

Think of the public service that could be done if the folks pursuing voter ID instead pursued validating already-public information.

Well, I don't think it would be a public service, and I don't think the folks pursuing voter ID are interested in performing a public service. The folks pursuing voter ID are claiming it's to prevent vote fraud, but I believe the argument is disingenuous. The real purpose of promulgating voter ID laws is to make voting more expensive and a hassle for a population of voters who are reliably Democratic. Voter ID prevents far more Democratic voters from voting than combing the rolls for invalid voter registrations does. I mean, sure, they could have an automated service against which they could run voter rolls to find people who registered fraudulently – it would be cheap and pretty easy – but that would turn up approximately nobody, because fraudulent registration is so vanishingly rare, and wouldn't actually be very effective at knocking registered Democrats out of the rolls. It doesn't actually do what they really want. So they pursue voter ID instead.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

in addition to all else people will point out, ID can expire out from under one, be stolen, be lost, be issued in a different


i would say more but my roommates are yelling outside my room

[cellio]

Sorry about the roommates. :-(

For purposes of voting, I wouldn't think it necessary that the ID be currently valid for its primary purpose. Name changes are a problem, yes (but if your name is changing, there's lots of paperwork you need to do).

Theft or loss cuts both ways. If somebody steals my wallet today, she can show up at the poll next month first thing in the morning, claim to be me, if challenged produce my voter-registration card, and then use my vote before I do. All you really need to vote, at least where I live, is to be able to supply a name and matching address and not look suspicious. In smaller districts you can count on the poll-worker knowing people, but not in the city.

From the comments here it sounds like there are enough issues that eliminating voter registration as an obstacle wouldn't work. Oh well.