From Act for Change:
The Massachusetts legislature is poised to make history in the coming weeks. A bill to allow Election Day Registration (EDR) — a measure that would protect every eligible citizen’s right to vote — is about to face a do-or-die committee vote. If it passes out of committee, it will be well on its way to becoming the law of the land.
Increasing civic participation is good for our democracy. Allowing registration on Election Day makes voting easier and brings people into the electoral process who are often excluded — like students, renters, low-income people, and those who have recently moved. We need a groundswell of support for this legislation from the public to pass it into law.
So, do you love democracy? Then call or write your own Rep and Senator and (politely) ask them to help get this bill to come out of committee.
Also: A list of the members of the Joint Committee on Election Laws:
Augustus of Second Worcester – Chair
Spilka of Second Middlesex and Norfolk –Vice-Chair
Baddour of First Essex
Morrissey of Norfolk and Plymouth
Creedon of Second Plymouth and Bristol
Brown of Norfolk, Bristol and Middlesex
Bradley of Hingham – Chair
Atsalis of Barnstable –Vice-Chair
Casey of Winchester
Galvin of Canton
Quinn of Dartmouth
Kujawski of Webster
Eldridge of Acton
Driscoll of Braintree
Allen of Boston
Frost of Auburn
Rogeness of Longmeadow
I’ve already spoken to a couple of people today who want to vote but can’t because of the registration deadline. One woman called and told me she just recently moved to Allston-Brighton and wasn’t sure if she’d updated her registration yet, and the election is today? An old friend emailed me and said that alas she hadn’t re-registered in Allston.
That is their civic duty. The rules are spelled out. One of the first things I’ve always done when moving is re-register to vote at my new address, within two weeks of moving. Sorry but it’s easy to do. And I’ve always gone to City or Town hall to do so. Motor Voter was and is horrendous law in my opinion. For all the talk about civic engagement, you guys seem to fall on the side of those that could not do a basic civic duty, that is register to vote in a timely manner.
to stress that it's a civic duty and test the mettle of prospective voters?
Maybe we should have only one polling place in the entire state…on top of a cold windy mountain, in a hidden cave, and only those dilligent enough to do their civic duty should be allowed the priveledge of casting their ballot?
On the other hand, why not let everyone vote, regardless of age, citizenship, residence. Heck, might as well let ’em vote as often as they’d like. Obviously absurd, as was your argument.
Good demonstration of how the more difficult the process of registration is made, the more of an absurd extreme registration becomes.
Are you saying voter registration is an absurd extreme, and to make it more difficult would be to make it more absurd? Thats absurd.
At present. Nor would it be an extreme with same day registration. However, the notion that registration be a difficult, daunting or even inconvenient task per se as a civic duty is equally absurd.
What so bad about motor voter? Please explain.
It was a right of passage for me to go to the City Hall in Lowell to register to vote. I had to show my birth certificate which proved I was a citizen as well.
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If one goes to register at a town or city hall, one immediately has more stake in the process. Therefore one is more apt to vote. I’d love to see statistics on Motor Voter vs. in person registrations and vote frequency.
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On the citizenship aspect, Motor Voter makes it too easy for non-citizens both legal and illegal to vote. That cheapens our democracy and constitution.
I suppose it is true that people who go to the trouble of registering at City Hall are more likely to vote, but is that cause or effect? Furthermore, prior to Motor Voter, the voting rate was abysmal so I don’t think anyone could claim that the previous system was working in any meaningful sense.
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I think the citizen issue is totally bogus. There is absolute no evidence that non-citizens are registering to vote in any numbers at all or that they cannot be detected. Also, since you can be asked for id when you vote, you would have to be nuts to try to vote without being a citizen. On the other hand, in my experience they hardly ever ask for id and since most people don’t vote, all you need to do to vote illegally is to go in and pretend to be someone else.
The City of Lawrence in 2001 lost a Federal case which nullified it’s ID requirement.
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Because I believe everybody should be asked for one.
..as characterized in your blockquote, is silly. I don’t know how it is where you live, but here in Wellesley, when we go to the polls, we have to announce our street address AND our name. The poll worker checks us off, and then we are given a ballot. We also have to give our names and addresses to the poll workers before the ballot will be entered into the ballot box, and we are checked off there, too.
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What is silly about yur blockquote is the following
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A federal judge in Massachusetts has barred a city from requiring voters to show personal identification, ruling that it would remove the right of citizens to vote anonymously.
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It isn’t the act of voting that is anonymous. It is the way that the ballot was filled out that is anonymous.
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I’ll give you another example. I don’t know if you’ve ever voted via absentee ballot, but I have. You get a ballot, an interior envelope, and a mailing envelope. You fill out the ballot, put it into the interior envelope, put your name and address on the interior envelope, seal the interior envelope and insert the sealed envelope into the mailing envelope, put a stamp on it and mail it. The poll workers open all the envelopes, retrieve the ballot, and then check you off as having cast your ballot.
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The problem with requiring ID with absentee ballots, is that there is no way for a poll worker to verify the ID of the person who filled out or mailed in the ballot. The problem will get only worse in states that are going entirely to voting-by-mail, which one of the northwestern states already appears to have done.
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Huh? If I vote without ID and they take my name down, how do they correlate my name with my ballot?
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What possible reason could a poll worker have to suspect someone’s identity?
What possible reason could a poll worker have to suspect someone’s identity?
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an issue of a poll worker suspecting someone’s identity. I doubt very seriously if most of them care.
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The issue is somewhat different. It is whether a poll watcher wants to challenge someone’s right to vote in an election. Political candidates/parties have the right to position poll watchers at polling places to mount challenges. I don’t know the details, but apparently the challenged voters have the right to cast “provisional ballots, which are not even counted unless the number of provisional ballots might effect an election.
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If provisional ballots might turn an election, the right of the voters to cast a provisional will be determined. Of course, in order to do that, the names and addresses of those casting provisional ballots would have to be indicated somewhere on the ballot.
Plain and simple: in order to vote you must show a picture ID.
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This should be federally mandated. It is going to the supreme court regarding a case in Indiana. Hopefully this will settle it once and for all. Although I’m not sure if this supreme court ruling will affect the entire Country.
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Anybody know if it will?
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http://www.readingea…
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Please stop with the unfair tax burden on the poor and elderly regarding getting an ID.
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We need to stop people from voting more than once and Illegal Aliens from voting. Picture ID’s will stop this kind of voter fraud.
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When did we lose common sense in America?
… ID will be free. Otherwise its a back door poll tax.
http://www.state.in…. The cost of an Indiana ID is $9. If you can't afford that then…
One of the plantiff's of this lawsuit is the Democratic Party of Indiana. Another reason in the long list as to why I did not leave the Democratic party the Democartic Party left me.
Can somebody explain to me why they would challenge this common sense law?
That weak poll tax excuse is out the window – see above quote.
There is simply no evidence that they do. So what problem are you really trying to solve?
HR Kevin: take the blinders off. Wake up!
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http://www.fairus.or…
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… from a Washington Times article. Even the one citation (again from the Times) indicates cases 18+ years ago. Not to put too fine a point on it, but local government databases have come a long way since 1989.
Ann Coulter, who feloniously voted out of district. I’m sure there are more other actual citizens who break the voting laws than non-citizens. Just as Jeb and the Florida gang.
http://www.nytimes.c…
120 people natiowide is a “sizable number”?
🙂
Just claims.
http://www.mysananto…
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These are the ones that get caught.
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Are you telling me a large amount of voter fraud does not go on in our elections? Let me guess your against the voter photo ID law?
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Hell, how do you thing Deval Patrick got elected? lol.
This comment was perfectly legitimate part of the discussion and there is no earthly reason why it should be deleted.
…and not feel you counteracted ratings abuse merely by rating me worthless.
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this WAS about the zero for Mr. Lynne, right?
or are confused by the ballot.
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People like this shouldn’t even be voting. They have difficulty chewing gum and walking at the same time.
Is that Mass would adopt that idea that gets passed around about giving all our electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. If even a few states adopted that view, we’d start getting some more attention around here.
The electoral college system has served us well for over 200 years. No need to change for change sake.
It served us well how? Huh?
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Granted, anything that helps Bush win is probably okay in your book, so 2000 is great by your lights. I get that.
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But there are other examples: the mess of 1824 that forestalled the installation of actual American semi-democracy under Andrew Jackson for another 4 years. The foolishness of 1876 that led to the bargain whereby Rutherford Hayes stole the election from Samuel Tilden. The price was only the end of Reconsturction and re-institution of suffocating official racism in the south. (Also happened in 1888, but Cleveland-Harrison wasn’t a wasted opportunity).
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Or is it that it triples the power of smaller, more xenophobic and Republican states beyond their fair share?
Sorry —-that was a local election.
…we’d apportion out electoral votes to reflect the popular vote within the state, not award our electoral votes to the overall winner.
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Maine does this, and EVERY Presidential candidate from BOTH parties campaigns there.
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I know, as a George Bush elector, I would have enjoyed casting one of his three electoral college votes in the House chamber in 2004. As it is, the people who voted for him in MA were disenfranchised.
Peter,
Actually Maine does not apportion its electoral votes based on popular vote, but by congressional district (see description at http://en.wikipedia….). I was not aware that MA at one time did this. The net effect is the same – more competition for EVs.
I and others count on you for accuracy – don’t let us down.
But even so – I’d go with congressional district voting too – althoguh I still think apportioning electoral votes according to overall popular vote, with the two senators going to the popular winner, would work best of all.
Congressional districts are everywhere gerrymandered to ensure noncompetitive elections. See California. Apportioning electoral votes in this way makes the election superfluous.
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I guess that would be a good way to get money out of politics, which I am told would be a good thing, because campaigns would no longer be required at any scale.
Also, I would want to see a database to prove if you are registered elsewhere. We HAVE such a system in the RMV, and town clerks should purge the rolls of chronic non-voters 30 days before the election, who would then have the option of passport voting.
And that is just to say that any solution is problematic.
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I’m not sure this debate belongs in the hands of party-aligned activists. I for one have trouble separating “Who benefits?” from the larger question.
Now, they issue them at birth.
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Changing times.
But thanks for thinking of me. 🙂
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PP, you must be aware that requiring a passport for voter registration, which costs $97, is tantamount to a poll tax. It is also voter obstruction. The Passport Agency has been so behind in filling passport applications that congress considered delaying implementation of the new must-have-a-passport-to-reenter-the-USA rule. I wonder if Condaleeza Rice, who is ultimately in charge of the Passport Agency, would buy into your plan?
She said for same day voting. There is a difference. You don’t have to had paid that “poll tax” if you did your civic duty and registered in a timely manner.
reading comprehension is a useful tool.
I cannot envision a scenario in which a person would walk to a polling place, demand to be added to the rolls with a passport, and then would leave without voting.
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As far as a ‘backdoor poll tax’ goes – why is a $97 passport fee (which requires actual proof of citizenship in order to obtain it) too much, but a $25 RMV photo ID fee OK? BTW – that is why Galvin has always opposed bills requiring a photo ID – none of them are free, ergo, they are a form of poll tax.
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Oh, btw, that backlog is done. It was a glitch because of the new Canadian passport requirement. And my first passport was signed by Robert McNamara, and my most recent by Madalyn Albright – if I can accept that, why can’t you accept Condi Rice?
“why is a $97 passport fee (which requires actual proof of citizenship in order to obtain it) too much, but a $25 RMV photo ID fee OK?”
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I never claimed either was OK.
It’s the proponents who asy it’s OK with a photo ID who are not.
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And I say – if we ARE going to allow same-day registration and voting with a photo ID, then let’s make it the one which requires proof of citizenship to obtain.
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Again – this is a solution in search of a problem, as conventional registration is not difficult.
…persons who are (i) ineligible to vote, voting, or (ii) persons who might otherwise be entitled to vote being prevented from voting, I’ll sit up and listen. Unfortuanately, nobody on either side has, so as far as I’m concerned, I haven’t seen anything to warrant changing the registration requirements. As far as I can tell, the registration requirement is not an undue burdon; from what I have read, town halls in most cities and towns have extended hours (maybe even on weekends) to accommodate those who cannot register during the regular work week.
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One further point. The US provides for dual citizenship, as do several other countries in the world, including Ireland and (I hesitate to point this out for having been lambasted by an ueber-anti-semite on another comment thread here) Israel. I do not know about France, Spain, Italy or the UK, but I do know that Germany does not provide for dual citizenship.
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I’m not a big fan of dual citizenship (the “a servant cannot serve two masters” issue) but one question. If someone votes in another country of whom he holds dual citizenship, should he also be permitted to vote in the US? Or vice versa. I frankly am dubious at the prospect.
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Regarding
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As far as a ‘backdoor poll tax’ goes – why is a $97 passport fee (which requires actual proof of citizenship in order to obtain it) too much, but a $25 RMV photo ID fee OK?
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Neither are.
How do you comprehend that quote? I read it to mean registration on election day.
… for some but not others. Still a poll tax.
never to permit registration on election day.
In other states where same day reg is available, an SS card, license, or even a residential bill serves as ID.
…town clerks should purge the rolls of chronic non-voters 30 days before the election…
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But here in Wellesley (we’re back) if someone fails to return a town census form, the residents at that address may be purged from the voter rolls. I see no reason to purge someone merely for not voting.
and, Arlington does the same thing – if you fail to fill out the annual census form, you may be purged (i’m not entirely sure it is automatic, but the threat is right on the census form.)
Welcome back, plain and simple. Always enjoy your posts.
No passport—-no vote!
So my mother who has never left the US has to go spend $100 just to vote? That sounds real American.
If you want to disenfranchise voters. That is the conservative strategy for success.
Conservative strategist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, Paul Weyrich, said while speaking at a church, “”How many of our Christians have what I call `the Goo-Goo' syndrome? Good Government. They want everyone to vote! I don't want everyone to vote! Elections are not won by the majority of people – they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now! As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as the voting populous goes down!”
The Democrats’ efforts to get every last person on the voting rolls, regardless of whether that person is legally entitled to vote, not to mention Democrats’ tireless advocacy of the voting rights of the inert and the deceased is evidence of Democrats’ essential beatific nature.
That there is any effort by Democrats to get anyone on the roles that is not legally entitled.
I didn’t say they are trying to enroll those who are not legally entitled, I said they are trying to enroll voters regardless of whether the prospective voter is entitled to vote. Hence all of the ticky tacky objections to any mechanism that would distinguish one from the other.
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If you support allowing people to just show up at the polls and vote, without even requiring as much proof of identtity as a bank teller cashing a check would, you manifestly care not whether the prospoective voter is legally entitled to vote.
He said: “… that is not legally entitled”
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You said: “… regardless of whether the prospective voter is entitled to vote.”
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When you say ‘entitled’ I think it is reasonable to infer that you also mean ‘legally entitled’, or is it a failure of my imagination that I can’t think of ways to be ‘entitled’ but not ‘legally entitled’?
Seriously, trying to enroll voters regardless of whether the prospective voter is entitled to vote is the same thing as trying to enroll voters that are unentitled. The latter is a subset of the former, so it follows that if you say the effort is on for the former it intrinsically means that an effort is made for the latter as well.
Since that is not only a futule effort (because those votes would not count) and malicious (because it encourages the ineligible voter to commit a felony) I think it is ridiculous to make such an assertion.
However, if you can provide evidence, I will look at it.
I am only suggesting it as a requirement for SAME DAY registration and voting.
…but that doesn’t seem to be what MCRD was saying.
The assumptions behind these things are always that more voting is better; participation rates are fetishized.
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I aloways wonder why someone who can’t even bother to register to vote (or can’t be bothered to go and actually vote) adds anything positive to the process. Registering to vote just isn’t that hard to do. Do expect people who can’t figure out where twon hall is to know the positions of the candidates for selectman?
you aren't contributing to the process at all, positive or negative. Non-arguement.
If you don't have the ability to easily get to town hall to register, it's more likely that you have demanding work hours and / or multiple jobs.
But in so many words, aren't you echoing John Adams' philosophy that the great unwashed masses shouldn't be trusted with self-government? Admitedly, he was speaking about direct democracy, but the core idea is the same, that: “the voice of the people is ‘sometimes the voice of Mahomet, of Caesar, of Catiline, the Pope, and the Devil.’”
It sounds kind of elitist when you see it in that light doesn't it?
This is just a solution in need of a problem.
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If that is elitist, so be it. While I’m at it, I’d restore the representation of the several states in the federal government by restoring the original method of electing Senators, and I’ll keep the electoral college in its present configuration.
Problem: Cos talked to a woman who couldn’t vote because of the registration deadline.
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Solution: Register before the deadline.
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Simple, and no expenditure of taxpayer funds or new legislation needed!
They missed the deadline.
How is that a solution?
Unless you see eligible voters that want to cast a ballot and are denied the chance to so do a “solution”.
She was not an eligible voter because she did not register to vote. She could have, but she did not. The solution would be for the flaky voter to register next time rather than whine about it.
We used to have blue laws that said you couldn't have a package store open in MA on a sunday. It was found to be inconvenient for residents and the law was arbitrary so it was deemed needless and was repealed.
That is how the system is supposed to work.
We are looking at a needless arbitrary, outdated law. Inconvenience to residents of the commonwealth is reason enough to repeal.
In other words, not eligible to vote.
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Vladimir Putin is not a citizen of the US, but is otherwise eligible to vote.
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The present law is neither arbitrary nor outdated. Consider the alternative proposed herein: anybody can walk into the polling station and, without producing anything other thgan their own say so, vote. Any requirement that the prospective voter document their identity is oppressive and burdensome. The already overburdened poll workers then have to go sort out who really should not have voted afterward, either because that person is deceased, resident elsewhere, or not even a citizen. And all this must be done while recognizing that the state’s capacity to spend money is not infinite.
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If it were even a slight hardship to register to vote, there might be some justification. But there just isn’t.
because same day registration works quite smoothly in 11 states already.
Now, how can you frame the registration law as anything but arbitrary? What is the justification for it?
I do believe there more in the works, however.
…”otherwise eligible to” means that, aside from satisfying the criterion defined by the specific variable, the person would “be eligible to” vote. But, in view of the fact that the person does not satisfy the criterion defined by the specific variable, he or she is not “eligible to.”
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I don’t know how it is in Boston. I’ve been voting in Wellesley for over 20 years, but the poll workers in Wellesley are hardly overworked.
HA! That’s it! I’m drivin’ 90 mph ALL the way home!!!!
do not think the speed limit is arbitrary and are likely thankful for your inconvience.
Same day registration does not have the obvious drawbacks that are obviously present from a porcupine doing 90 on residential side streets.
“were eligible, but missed the registration deadline”
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…and therefore were no longer eligible to vote.
… I can think of to want electors between the voting public and the elected government are if you:
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a) foresee a need where electors would vote differently than the public (i.e. not trusting the public to vote), or;
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b)if you see a need to weigh votes as geographically not equal.
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The founding fathers had the first idea in mind, fearing mob rule. The second is a democratic distortion. What is your position and why?
The federal government is, at least in theory, supposed to be a very limited thing. 99% of the government of the people is supposed to be done by local government, that is, by the several states. At bottom, the federal government is supposed to be a federation of those state governments. The people are already represented in the House; the states were supposed to be represented in the Senate.
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It is the present system, in which the people are represented in both the Senate and the House, that creates geographic distortions, which is how Wyoming has the same number of votes in the Senate as California. As originally designed, every representative of the people represented roughly the same number of people, just as every representative of the states represented the same number of states.
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Likewise, the electoral college gives the states a role in the election of the preseident of the federal government.
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I think the deletion of the states from the Senate accounts in no small measure for the dreadful Washington impulse to federalize everything.
… geographical distortion is well known, but I guess the question regarding the Electoral College is this: Given that it does distort the vote geographically and given that it does represent a distrust of the voter,… is keeping the EC justified and why?
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I take it that you’re points are that geographical distortion is demonstrably permissible given the Senate as an example (still not an argument for the EC, just a mitigation of an argument against the EC) and that undercutting the voter is desirable to create more of a role for State Governments in the election process. Do I have that right?
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“I think the deletion of the states from the Senate accounts in no small measure for the dreadful Washington impulse to federalize everything.” This is evidence that it is sometimes desirable to undermine the will of the electorate?
but temper.
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This is a useful bulwark against damaging populism.
… if you find that when the popular vote disagreed with the electoral vote, the electoral vote was right and the popular vote was wrong. Could you cite when, historically, this has been the case and why? Then there is the question useful in who’s opinion? Then the question is why this group or person’s opinion more than another group or person’s opinion? That leads us right back to the voter.
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If the voters want x but the system that alleges to represent them gives them y in the very process that is supposed to give their wishes a voice, then yeah… I’d say undermine.
…some people have complained that the registration requirement, say, 2 weeks in advance of the election, can disenfranchise people who move into a town between the registration deadline and the election.
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Provisional ballots. It seems to me that, if people are moving into a town between the registration deadline and election day they will know that they will be moving into town, and can register at town hall before the registration day. The town clerk can mark the registered voters roster for those people with an indication that they are only entitled to a provisional ballot, and similarly with the current resident of the abode. In the unlikely event that the provisional ballots might turn an election, the town clerk can investigate the right to vote (did they really move into town before election day? and the then current resident move out?) before counting the provisional ballots.
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Issue resolved.