The Acorn Story

The New York Times editorializes about voter fraud, and lack of…

But for all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence — anywhere in the country, going back many elections — of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.

Meanwhile, Republicans aren’t saying anything about another more serious voter-registration scandal: the fact that about one-third of eligible voters are not registered. The racial gaps are significant and particularly disturbing. According to a study by Project Vote, a voting-rights group, in 2006, 71 percent of eligible whites were registered, compared with 61 percent of blacks, 54 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of Asian-Americans.

Much of the blame for this lies with overly restrictive registration rules. Earlier this year, the League of Women Voters halted its registration drive in Florida after the state imposed onerous new requirements.

The answer is for government to do a better job of registering people to vote. That way there would be less need to rely on private registration drives, largely being conducted by well-meaning private organizations that use low-paid workers. Federal and state governments should do their own large-scale registration drives staffed by experienced election officials. Even better, Congress and the states should adopt election-day registration, which would make such drives unnecessary.

The real threats to the fabric of democracy are the unreasonable barriers that stand in the way of eligible voters casting ballots.

[From Editorial – The Acorn Story – NYTimes.com]

From my perspective, there should be a few changes made to the US election system.

1. If you can get a drivers license or a social security card¹ – you should be able to check off a box on your application, and simultaneously be registered to vote. Why all the restrictions?
2. Also, the election should be a national holiday, or at least held on a weekend, so that there is encouragement for everyone to vote.
3. The polls should always be open for a month before the actual election².

Simple, right? Americans should all vote in election, and the government should encourage citizens to vote in as many ways as it can afford to.

Footnotes:

1. our de-facto national id cards [↩]
2. they are in Chicago, for the first time I know of [↩]