12YO’s Petition: Give Teens The Ability To Pre-Register To Vote Nationwide

[sheshe2]

Photo credit: Kaitlyn Barlow



In the summer of 2013, 12-year-old Madison Kimrey created a petition requesting a sit down with North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R) to discuss his sweeping anti-voter bill, which included taking away the ability for teens to pre-register. When asked about her request, he replied by saying the notion of talking with her was “ridiculous” and then he referred to her as a prop for liberal groups. He then signed the bill into law.

McCrory’s dismissal of Madison’s request earned her a guest spot on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry. Her petition has received over 13 thousand signatures and a recent speech about voting rights in her home state of North Carolina went viral. The speech earned her more national television appearances and media attention.

Fueled with enthusiasm, Madison has created a new MoveOn.org petition and the goal is to make pre-registration for 16 and 17 year-olds a federally protected right: Give All of America’s Teenagers the Ability to Pre-Register to Vote

Madison told Liberals Unite, “This is an opportunity for Congress to come together in support of encouraging young people to lead. People like to talk about bipartisanship and I can’t think of a more bipartisan issue than this one that is about young people and voting. If lawmakers aren’t in favor of encouraging more young people to vote and pay attention, we deserve to hear their reasons for this.”

More~
http://samuel-warde.com/2013/11/12-year-old-activist-new-petition/

Our Children are our Future, that is an undeniable truth!

[okaawhatever]

1. Come on folks, sign the petition. This is important for us. nt

[defacto7]

2. Done

and commented... and tweeted... and emailed.

[freshwest]

3. I'd make an addendum. Register at birth. All people permanently registered, no jumping through hoops

Last edited Sun Nov 17, 2013, 03:06 PM - Edit history (1)

for presidential elections only. Unless one wants their child to be an unregistered citizen with no social security number, it can go with that in the future. Not sure how it's done in Australia, but univeral sufferage works for them.

[Igel]

5. Yup.

Permanently registered.

I was born in Baltimore. That means I'm permanently registered in Baltimore (okay, in Balto. County), even if I haven't lived there for 32 years?

Can I be permanently registered in Hoboken, NJ; Newark DE; Eugene, OR; Rochester, NY; Houston TX; Los Angeles, CA?

At all of the addresses I've lived at?

Gee--then I'll have fun in 2014 when I vote. I get to vote in 10 different jurisdictions, for House representatives from 7 states.


Perhaps "they" could transfer my registration when I move, automatically, to keep me from having to file a paperwork "hoop". Meaning that there'd be some central repository of such information, tracking each citizen's place of residence, able to discriminate between temporary and permanent relocations, and never disenfranchising anybody because the government agency making such determinations would have an error rate not just of 1%, but of 0.00000001% or less.

If people can't be bothered to file a simple form, it's unlikely that they're going to go to the polls and have any idea what any of the issues are or who the people are. Except the one or two things that they know will help them personally in the short term or help somebody they know. All the new fancy ways of registering and voting--Internet, motor-voter; early, mail, extended hours--have led to pretty much no increase in voter turnout.

We're all looking for the magic bullet that'll increase voter participation to Soviet norms, while ensuring an informed electorate (informed like us, naturally--any other kind isn't True Informed (tm)). It's not there. Social trust and civic participation are built, and need to be long term for the common--not personal or particular--good.

[freshwest]

6. I was going to add for elections for POTUS as I'd considered that but had to leave the computer.

I'll go back and add it, since you decided to go there. Bye.

[Posteritatis]

7. It's more or less how it works in Canada

Voter registration is just tied to social insurance/tax records, so as long as we're known to be alive we're registered to vote wherever we happen to live on election day. A week or two into each election campaign I get a card in the mail saying where I go to vote and when (and the card constitutes proof of registration). Nobody jumps through hoops to request permission from the government to vote.

[freshwest]

9. Sounds great, that's what I meant. The games being played don't match the intent for full sufferage.

[B Calm]

4. Signed the petition! K&R

[Lizzie Poppet]

8. I don't blame McRory for not meeting with her.

At least if there were cameras running, anyway. I've heard Madison Kimrey speak, and I have no doubt McRory would get his ass handed to him.

[Chan790]

10. Sorry, I can't sign the petition because it's on MoveOn and it took me 2 months...

to get them to stop spamming me the last time I signed something for them.

If one wants their petitions to be taken seriously, they need to use a legitimate petitioning site like Causes that doesn't consider you signing a petition to be permission for them to add you to their supporter rolls and mailing lists, drown you in fundraising emails and spam on unrelated topics for the rest of your life. Minimally, they need to include a check box to opt out of such spam on the petition signing page. MoveOn is a political spam factory.