We need a national voter registration system. The Supreme Court's decision today upholding Indiana's photo-ID voting requirement was the last straw. But there are other reasons, too.
Here's the NY Times story on the Supreme Court's latest abomination on democracy:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
In 1964 the 24th amendment struck down any "poll tax or other tax" as a requirement to vote in Federal elections. At the time, I believe the typical poll tax in states that had one was $1.50 or $1.75. Indiana plans to issue a state ID card with a photo free, but you have to get to a department of motor vehicles office to get one, and you need a birth certificate. Try getting an out of state birth certificate and bus fare to a DMV office and back for $1.75, or even for the inflation adjusted equivalent of that 43 years later. Registering to vote shouldn't be any harder than getting to the polls to vote. Most polling places are probably an hour's walk or less from the farthest corner of the precinct. My home town has hundreds of polling places on the day of presidential elections; it has four DMV offices, all in the suburbs for the good reason that anybody going there for a driver's test needs to have his own car to take the test in, so he/she can get to the suburbs. Besides, do you really want to do those driver's tests in downtown traffic? But does Indiana have downtown offices where people who ride the bus can get those ID cards?
---------
Another reason for national voter registration: The national popular vote movement is gaining ground.
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
This movement seeks an "agreement among the states" that could make the winner of the national popular vote the mandated choice of the Electoral College as soon as states representing a majority of the electoral votes pass identical versions of an enabling law. One fly in the ointment, that I don't believe that enabling law addresses, is possible differences in the difficulty of registering to vote in different states.
-------
Another reason for national voter registration is to prevent people from voting in two states. How many people own a second home in another state, like Florida? What stops those folks from voting both in Florida and their other 'home' state in the northeast or midwest? I'd bet a good number of people do exactly that. Further, I'd bet that the majority of folks who do vote in multiple states are Republican: first, because being wealthy enough to have two houses likely correlates with voting Republican, and second because I suspect being unethical enough to do it also correlates with voting Republican. How big is the voting-in-two-states problem? I don't know, but that Indiana law was passed to address what seems to be a tiny voter fraud problem. To my knowledge, nobody's even looked to see if people are voting twice in the same Federal election. After all, if you live in New York but have a house in Florida, there's a great rationale for voting twice -- your New York vote for President is probably inconsequential, but hey, Florida is a swing state. Why not vote where it might make a difference?