It’s All About Elections

I know that everyone is consumed with election news – the Markey-Lynch debate.  Which state rep or senator is most anxious to get away from the morass on Beacon Hill to take Markey’s seat in the worse mess on Capitol Hill.  Is there going to be a special for Fresolo’s seat in Worcester that a progressive might win.  And now Menino.

But none of it matters if people can’t vote.

Next Wednesday, the Joint Committee on Election Laws will host a hearing on a bill designed to improve the way we run elections in Massachusetts.  That bill makes some substantive changes but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.  It would be a travesty if Massachusetts did anything less than full-fledged election reform, when everyone from the President on down is acknowledging that “we have to fix that”.

I’m not quite sure where to start cataloguing the problems with our elections, but long lines, no online tool to look up your current registration, arcane rules around inactive voters and no early voting make up the beginnings of a long list.

Arcane, outdated election laws mean too many people are unable to vote, period. As an active participant in the reality-based community, I firmly believe that if more people participated in elections, the commonwealth would look a lot more progressive than it does right now. With low voter participation, it is no wonder that so many legislators think their constituents are more conservative than they actually are (warning PDF).

Fortunately, I probably don’t have to tell this community that the solutions to low voter participation and election day confusion are easy.

Early voting and no-excuse absentee voting will go a long way toward making it easier for many of us to vote when it is convenient.  (Although, surprisingly, there is little evidence to show that early voting increases turnout.)  Regardless of effect on turnout, removing barriers to participation in our democracy is a necessary step.*

Along with early voting, the bill that is being heard next week (sponsored by Elections Co-Chair Barry Finegold) will take some important steps to improve elections by pre-registering 16 and 17 year-olds, protecting the integrity of the vote by randomly auditing some precincts every election and a few other important modernizations.

This is great, and I’m all for steps in the right direction, but let’s get serious, Senator Finegold’s bill doesn’t include EDR (Election Day Registration) and hence, doesn’t go far enough.

We know that EDR is the single most effective thing we can do to increase turnout. In 2008, when EDR passed the Massachusetts Senate (14 of the ‘yes’ votes are still around, btw), Demos did a study projecting that Massachusetts could see an increase in turnout of 4.9%, with even larger increases anticipated among young voters and African Americans.

And this year, there are a number of bills filed that would make EDR the law of the land. Senator Eldridge has a good one, which also includes many important election modernization policies.  Senator Cindy Creem and Rep. Gloria Fox have stand-alone EDR bills as well.

The bottom line is:

1. We know our election system is broken
2. We know what will fix it

So, what is Beacon Hill doing about it?

Short answer, not enough. Barry Finegold is off to a good start, a decent bill, an early hearing, and he has the political instincts it takes to navigate the legislature. But small-bore change just isn’t what we sent our legislators up there to do. We want to make sure we are making real change that matters.

Help us get EDR passed.  We want to bring 500 signatures to the hearing next week – and we are more than halfway to our goal.  Sign here.

Ben Wright, Campaign Director, Progressive Mass

*Some of you may be familiar with the discussion about whether or not early voting and absentee voting can happen without changes to our constitution, we at Progressive Massachusetts, not being lawyers, are not taking a position on a particular method for implementation, but we strongly support early voting.