Election Day Registration, contrary to the naysayers’ opinions, does not increase voter fraud. You still have to do the same thing you would do to sign up to vote before the election: proof of residency and an ID.
I have myself been a victim of the poor manner in which our current system works. Before buying a house, we moved a lot to different apartments, and it was always difficult to remember that you have to reregister to vote weeks earlier than the election actually is scheduled. It’s made me run around town trying to find out where, exactly, I was actually listed. Once, I filled out a voter reg form with a campaign, and that registration never made it to City Hall. If I had long scheduled work hours and only a short time to get to the polls, I might not have gotten to vote that day at all. After standing in line at my new polling place, I was forced to stand in another line at my old polling place. Same day registration would have given me a faster way to vote. It enfranchises voters – students and minorities especially. And if there were fraud, it would be discovered after the fact once polling data is collated – and the perpetrator punished.
Other states have implemented this law with success. Call Panagiotakos at (617) 722-1630 and tell him to support this bill and get it moving out of committee on its way to the Governor’s desk. This bill is too important to let it die.
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p>I’ve personally brought in 100s of completed voter registration forms from [mostly young] people in the Boston metro area, to their corresponding Town Clerk’s office or to Boston City Hall.
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p>I’ve followed up, and they’ve all been added to the rolls.
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p>Not once did any of them show identification. They all signed the part on the bottom that swore truthfulness, and the penalty — $10,000 and/or 5 years in the pokey — is significant enough that I don’t believe anybody monkeys around.
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p>But… ID? I’m not so sure it’s used, nor do I really believe it’s necessary.
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p>Same day registration is a good thing. The right to vote should not depend on you being eligible to vote in that location 16 days earlier, nor should it depend on being organized 16 days earlier.
It’s way too easy for me to pretend to be my brother (who I can almost guarantee won’t vote) and thus vote a second time myself. The more I think about this the more I wonder if we should do like other countries and skip the registration step altogether. Just show up and prove your identity and residence, cast your ballot, and be done with it.
I believe an ID requirement for voter registration came as part of HAVA, passed as a (very poorly thought out) response to the Florida election scandal of 2000. The way it works is this: You need an ID for your first registration, but not for most simple updates of your existing registration. You can either show ID in person when you register, if you register to vote in person, or you can register by mail and then show ID at the polls the first time you vote.
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p>I agree that ID should not be required. Voting is a right, not a privilege that people need to show they’re worthy of. Not everyone has, or is required to have, a proper ID to exist in this country.
I called my Senator, Petruccelli, and the staffer told me (after some searching around on a computer or papers or something) that Petruccelli “is a strong supporter”. She then said the bill had been sitting in the Ways and Means Committee since February and I asked what could be done to move it along, and she said she’d ask the Senator to ask the committee to do so. I stressed that we should act on this quickly so that the state has time to implement it for the big election coming up this year and she agreed.
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p>In response to this post, I also called Panagiotakos’s office. The staffer there was completely unfamiliar with the bill and didn’t give any particularly helpful response, but did take my message.