Election Day Registration Hearing

1:59-2:10pm: Legislators are beginning to wind their way into the room. Some people I recognize milling around the room: Lt. Governor Murray — I’m told that he will speak. Rep. Eldridge is also here as is Cam Kerry, Senator Creem (she’s my state senator and main sponsor of the bill), Rep. Fox (sponsor of the House version), Grace Ross, Rep. Augustus (chairman of the committee), and many others. I’m only listing those I recognize right now. The room is positively overflowing with people supporting EDR, many are wearing giant stickers for it.

2:12: Gavel banged. Sen. Augustus introduces us to the committee and sets out the agenda.

2:14: Lt. Gov Murray: Talks about civic engagement. On behalf of the Governor he expresses their support for EDR, thanking poll workers and election day workers, as well as Galvin for getting machines to allow every citizen to vote.

EDR is about getting government to work with people to help people participate. This is part of a commitment to working families. It’s worked in 7 states and in big cities and small towns. This is part of engaging citizens and this is something we’ve dealt with before?when we allowed 18 yr. olds to vote, so we’ve dealt with new voters before.

No questions for the Lt. Governor.

2:18 Sen. Creem and Rep. Gloria Fox, sponsors of the bill came forward.

Rep. Fox: This is “an initiative whose day has arrived.” Thanks numerous groups for coming together on this group from SEIU, Sierra Club, NAACP and many others. Suburban, urban, Democrats and Republicans all support EDR. It enhances and updates current system to allow people to take advantage of their “god-given right,” to vote on the day of the election. This eliminates a lot of confusion regarding voting — if voters have been dropped from the rolls and so on, they can get back on that day. This bill would require identification. There have been few instances of fraud.

Fox predicts that 2008 will have a need for people to vote. Excitement is high in the citizenry to vote – we’ve seen that in 2006, and she predicts we’ll see that kind of excitement again in the 2008 elections. She’s quite excited!

MA was one of the first states to sanction South Africa that led to one-man/one-vote in South Africa. They extended the voting day. If South Africa can that, certainly we can do EDR so there is no barrier to the right to vote.

2:24: Senator Creem: Aren’t we lucky that we live in a country and a state where we can continue to remove barriers to voting? We owe it to the people of MA to be able to vote when they come to the vote. She echoed much of what Fox said and mentioned that voter participation rates in states with EDR was above 73% in 2006 compared to the mid 60s in other states.

I found the questioning period interesting, though ultimately unenlightening. For instance, Representative Frost asked about people who vote “by mistake,” that is, they don’t intend to do fraud, but they wind up voting in a precinct or at a time when they are not in fact registered to do so. Augustus suggests that Galvin can answer some of these questions at a later period.

2:36: Galvin: The issue is not the concept of EDR — the concept makes good sense. It’s the administrative carrying out of the process. There’s a lot of administrative issues that just have to be worked out. He is eager to make this work and supports it strongly, but it won’t be a panacea for the group of people to participate. EDR’s an excellent way to remedy many of the problems that we do have.

Galvin stress that it’s very important that people get the right ballot because oftentimes what side of the street you live on determines what voting district you are in — so you need different ballots for people voting at same place.

A real help in this would be: if we could check the person in the central voter registry in real time. That would have the annual listing of residents (not just voters)–you could instantly know whether they are in fact a resident at the household they say they are. This will also reduce fraud. Here is the core of his recommendations:

• 2 additional workers at each precinct to specifically deal with EDR
• Have those already on the rolls be able to vote straight through (a fast lane for those who registered early, to encourage traditional voter registration)
• Exclude EDR from those who have registered at town meetings, at least at this time to make it simpler — we could do EDR at town meetings at a later date.
• Address the issue of grace period and get rid of it. Right now people have a 6 month grace period so they could vote in their old towns. With EDR we could scrap that.
• Solve issues with primary voter participation. In order to vote in the primary you must be either unenrolled or a member of a party. This is not a big problem, but we need to figure out how to address party registration from old system?how many primary ballots does the SoS print? Right now he has to guess?now he?s going to have figure out how many to print of each party again.
• Assess the number of different language ballots needed. Obviously the same rights would have to be protected of Spanish speaking voters, but how would we estimate that under EDR? Similar issues with Chinese and Vietnamese ballots (at minimum).
• wire-up every polling place to contact the Central Voting Registry — this also assures the voter they’re getting the right ballot
• Don’t make change to check-out table — it’s been suggested that we get rid of it, but Galvin would not do that. It’s not duplicity, it’s a 2nd check to make sure right voter voted, and it also makes a mathematical check to make sure they have an accurate count of votes.

This was really the core of the talk, in my opinion, and nicely addresses most of the issues that were brought up (without me having to type out what was brought up!)

Rep. Bradley brought up a question of cost and how we will minimize it. Galvin answered that there were a number of ways to make this less expensive, and in addition there are federal grants that can help.

Frost: It sounds like you have 2 difference processes. Traditional process and EDR process: in one process there is ID the other is murky. Frost’s concerns appear to me to be mostly relating to federal elections. At points it’s hard to understand what point he is making, though — another person listening to him next to me agreed.

Galvin: The problem with voter ID is disenfranchisement. And the people most likely to be disenfranchised are the elderly. What do you say to an 85 year old whose family just convinced her to give up her license who walks into a polling place with no ID now?

There were more questions, but this post is already getting too long. Suffice to say that there was more back and force, and the rest of the hearing went something like this:

Numerous groups–NAACP, League of Women Voters, Urban League, MassVote, SEIU 1199, MassPIRG, Cam Kerry, Grace Ross, student groups, and election commissioners from Minnesota and Wisconsin (where EDR has been in place since the 1970s) all spoke. They generally hit the same points summarized above though in different ways. Main thing: fraud is not an issue, and this is about voter participation.

The town clerks association made a couple of interesting points when they spoke (around 3:45):

• This decision on EDR shouldn?t be made in a vacuum — there are other bills we need to pay attention to, like early voting. Let’s make sure they don’t conflict.
• Worries about lines: would people stand in line to register to vote, then stand in line to vote then standing in line to check out during in high turnout elections? Would this actually increase the amount of time it takes to vote?
• Clerks are already swamped getting people into the system. (I’m not sure this would be a problem if poll workers had access to put people into the central
  voting system — I was unclear what she meant by this.
• Costs — new handicap machines cost over $1,000?where would funding come from? [Would new machines be necessary? I doubt it.]
• 8pm cutoff. Could people who stood online at, say 7:59pm election day still register to vote that day and vote that day? This isn?t a case of being too busy. When you got and vote, if you?re on line by 8pm, you can vote. But would registering you to vote take more time? Would there be an earlier cutoff time to register to vote?
• What’s the timeline of implementation. Galvin mentioned it would probably happen in 2008, but not 2007. What specific timelines do clerks have to work within?

I think the town clerks brought up some interesting points that would have to be addressed. It seems like there’s a general agreement that it isn’t a question of whether EDR is right, it’s a matter of hammering out all the nuts and bolts. After the hearing, I went up to the committee chair and asked him how good a shot EDR had, given the overwhelming support it had at the hearing. He said it was a good sign that most of the representatives are on board, and that Galvin, Patrick and Murray are all on board as well and are pushing for it. But we shouldn’t underestimate how much the town clerks will also slow down the process. What’s more, most of the Representatives didn’t stay for a lot of the great talks given at the hearing and they have to get the message. (I can understand why they left, though – a lot of it was repetitive.)

One last note. At the end of the meeting, by which time the vast majority of folks had left, an 85 year old woman got up and spoke. She lived in small towns in Maine for awhile and has been an activist for some time now. She described in detail activism she has done?fighting for special needs (which didn’t have that name then), and affordable housing. Addressing the clerks, who had long since left, she said they should fight for the budget money to put the money in the right place in the towns. The clerks should pursue their own help if they need more money from the budget. The woman sometimes rambled, but I have to say, this was democracy at work. Anybody can address the State Representatives (Bradley and Augustus mostly) in the same way anybody from a major advocacy organization can.

On that note, citizen journalism, signing off!

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