Does it say ANYWHERE in the constitution, that one must register

[SoCalDem]

to vote?? Strict "constitutionalists" would have to allow ANY citizen who could PROVE they were a citizen (and not a felon), to vote..unless the constitution says they must be registered..

All a person should need, in order to vote, is "proof of citizenship", and something that verifies their home address (for local/state elections)...

The NAACP,the ACLU, and the other organizations that spend gazillions of dollars should press for a "no-registration-needed" rule for national elections..and get these underpriviledges people PASSPORTS.. Their "identification" is always getting the evil-eye , so I say...get them unimpeachable identification, and pay for it with some of that money that's normally spent, and then regretted, because it was spent in the wrong places..

My take is that the whole registration thing is just a way for the parties to "recognize" their base..If people want to, fine.. but it should not be required..

If registration is necessary for primaries, that's one thing, but ANYONE who is a citizen (and can prove it) should be allowed to vote for senator/congressperson/president..without registering..

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. This is meant to prevent "vote early and often"

otherwise how would they know?

[SoCalDem]

2. Um.. when you go to vote, your name is enetered into a "voted" database

We DO have ways of keeping track of people these days.. Visa/Mastercard/your bank/hell..even your grocery store knows how to track you..

It just seems to me that we are wasting a TON of money trying to "not keep track of" people, and a TON of money trying to keep "some people" from voting..

A statewide database (which they probably already have anyway) that says that Mary Jones @ 1234 Anywhere Street, Cleveland Ohio voted on 10/16. would pretty much prevent Mary Jones at said address from voting somewhere else. It would not say what party she belonged to or for whom she voted.. It would just say that she was verified as being a citizen, and she voted.. That IS ALL..

As long as we make voting a complicated obstacle course, we will NEVER "get it right"..

Canada manages to have "normal elections".. why can't we ?? (Don't answer that question:)..)

[delete_bush]

4. you'd have to expand your proposed statewide database

to a national database to prohibit voting in more than one state.

[tjwash]

12. It's public record too.

Anyone can look up the information.

[ParanoidPat]

3. The Constitution leaves the conduct of elections up to the States.......

.....The States require registration to plan elections (number of precincts, ballots etc.) and to prevent people from voting more than once.

I'm afraid we're stuck with this system.

[SoCalDem]

5. Then why don't states just automatically "register" every 18+ yr old

and be done with it?? The department of vital statistics knows where we are, and how old we are.. Why not just automatically include everyone? They would still have to show ID proving their citizenship, but especially these days, it's got to be a snap to find out where people were born,when they were born, and where they are..

I just think it's amazingly 19th century, the way we elect the people who run the most powerful country on earth .. Makes no sense to me..

[RoyGBiv]

8. It's amazingly 20th century ...

The system used for much of the 19th century was far worse.

I fully support the idea of automatically registering everyone who is 18+. But that still maintains a registration system. Simply presenting your driver's license is not an adequate method of proving ID, much less citizenship unless there is some list to which to compare it and thus "check off" the fact that you've already voted. (Ask someone in the liquor/convenience store industry about how good a determination of ID a driver's license is. If a 16 yo with enough time on his hands can fake an ID and buy beer, a determined group/person seeking to commit fraud could do it much more efficiently.) This also necessitates the use of voter precincts and/or a central database, the former being more preferable in my view for the same reason paper ballots are more preferable. People can screw around with a database.

[delete_bush]

9. you seem to think there's some sort of master

database of everyone in the state updated with real-time information. In my case, the phone company has me at my current address, my drivers license is at my prior address because I haven't changed it, several state licensing bureaus list me at my business address, and I've also got a P.O. box.

I don't see a better way, unless we get a national ID.

[arcos]

10. That's exactly what I asked a week ago...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1047555

[Virginian]

6. You may have a point.

I suppose we could mark the thumbnail as they do in Afghanistan.

Registering helps to organize the voting. Knowing how many to expect at a precinct helps the board know how many to staff at that location. The full-time, experienced people handle the paperwork so that the one-day-temps you see at the polls aren't bogged down with verifying the paperwork. It is a form of checks and balances. It helps with the statistical analysis after the election, too.
Not all ballots are the same in my county. Our congressional district is split within the county.

I suppose if I were on a business trip to Boston, I could get excited about voting for Teddy Kennedy.

Since Maryland will probably go for Kerry by a wide margin, I could invite some of them down here to work on Virginia's redness. Maybe we could turn blue with a little help from our friends.

[RoyGBiv]

7. No, yes, ummm ...

First, we must remember that no such animal exists as a national election. Elections are administered by states, and as a constitutional question, this is something left to the states and so not spelled out in the document that defines the powers and responsibilities of the national government. States formulate their own election laws, and those laws govern things like the necessity of registration. These laws fit fully with a strict constructionist point of view.

As far as the need for registration, this cuts both ways. As I mentioned in a post in some other thread, the current method used by many states is the current state of evolution of the way the two main parties maintain control over the entire election process. For that reason alone it should be abandoned, but the question is what system do we use to replace it. This is not as easy a question as it sounds.

Voter registration is a fairly modern invention. The first half of this nation's history required no such thing. As a result, voter fraud was rampant. I am sometimes amused, in a dark sort of way, at the angst generated by the potential for fraud in our modern elections. That angst has a real basis, and I am certainly concerned about it myself, but if we were to turn the clock back a dozen decades, we'd see a true mess. Now we have voter registrations being torn up. Then, we had people, including dead people, voting three, four, five, ten times. "Proving" your citizenship as a standard for who gets to vote is no more a guarantee for a clean election than what we have now. In many ways, it is a worse guarantee. Without a system of proving that citizenship far more intrusive and cumbersome (national ID card, complete with finger-prints, eye scans, DNA samples, etc.) as well as slow-to-implement, a person could "prove" their citizenship as multiple people for purposes of voting fairly easily in such an environment. For $20 and access to some easily obtainable information, I could be 5 different people on election day, vote in five different polling places, and no one would know about it. Voter registration makes that not quite as easy.

[claudiajean]

11. There are a host of very good reasons:

...the main ones are these:

1. Voting is completely voluntary and it is nobody's business, certainly not the government's, whether a person chooses to vote or not. The tracking of the current residence all citizens over the age of 18 by issuance of tickets to everyone would improperly expose to the government those who exercise their voting rights by choosing not to vote, and improperly gather information about the whereabouts of persons not under suspicion of any crime.

Do you really want Ashcroft's thugs to have a legal reason to track you?


2. Americans have far more elected officials than any other democracy, including a host of local officials. We prefer to directly elect our local leaders, rather than have them appointed by the government. We have to register to assure that we receive a ballot that allows us to vote in all of the appropriate jurisdictions for our address. We don't just have Federal (national) elections, as some democracies do, in which a universal voting ticket would suffice.

Depending upon what part of the country one lives in, we have city and town officials, county sheriffs and prosecuting attorneys, fire and life safety commissioners, water commissioners, sewer commissioners, utility commissioners (electricity), drainage district commissioners, egg commissioners, dogcatchers (animal control) cemetery commissioners, airport commissioners, port directors, school board members, fertilizer and irrigation commissioners, noxious weed commissioners, range commissioners, etc. etc. etc.

These various agencies do not have the same boundaries. Thus, to know what combinations of jurisdictions one is eligible to vote in based upon our current address, we must register.

As to a national ID card, or unversal tracking that would "solve" this need, no thank you. We may surrender a patchwork of information about ourselves through banking, driver's licenses, etc., but people who are savvy about maintaining their privacy can fairly effectively stay invisible. Voter registration tied to a national ID would blow that out of the water.