If you're one of those people who thinks Canada, especially the ewwwwww French part, is just a squatter on the North American continent that in a just world would be sent packing to join the social-democratic European states, you might want to avert your eyes for a few minutes. It turns out that the Canadians do a far better job at getting one of the fundamentals of democracy right than does the United States. Far better, far cheaper, far more efficiently.
That's according to the latest commissioned study of the Pew Center on the States.
The crux of the problem, Pew states, is that "Voter registration in the United States largely reflects its 19th-century origins and has not kept pace with advancing technology and a mobile society." As a consequence, most states use a slow, obsolete paper-based system that costs several times what it should to register and keep track of voters, has nearly two million dead people on the rolls, and millions of registration records that are invalid or inaccurate. Moreover, maintaining this chaotic system wastes millions of dollars.
Pew's commissioned researchers found:
• Once duplicates are eliminated, some 24 million registration records, or nearly 13 percent of the national total, are estimated to be inaccurate or no longer valid. About half of these do not have currently valid addresses.
• More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as active voters.
• About 2.75 million people have active registrations in more than one state.
• An estimated 51 million eligible U.S. citizens are unregistered, or nearly one-fourth of the eligible population.
• The cost of printing and processing forms, handling returned mail from inaccurate
records, maintaining registration databases and other expenses add millions of dollars to state and local budgets.
David Becker, director of Pew’s Election Initiatives, said that the center’s findings did not suggest any kind of voter fraud or voter suppression from these problems, but noted they do “underscore the need for an improved system."
The researchers did an in-depth case study of Oregon, the first of its kind in the nation. They found that the state spent $8.8 million on registration for the 2008 general election, which clocks in at $4.11 for each voter registered and $7.67 for each registration transaction. A study by Caltech/ MIT Voting Technology Project found that Wyoming spends $4 per active voter to maintain its registration database, a task it outsources to a private vendor.
Maricopa County, Arizona—which includes Phoenix—saved more than $1 million over five years with online voter registration. By reducing paperwork, including manual data entry, it cut printing costs 75 percent. Online registration in Arizona costs an average of 3 cents to process, compared with 83 cents for a paper form.
Canada does even better. It spends 35 cents to maintain its list of voters in a federal election year. It also doesn't rely on a paper-based system, and it uses advanced data-matching techniques. Our neighbors to the north also do a far better job at getting people registered. In the United States, only 75 percent of those old enough are registered. In Canada, the figure is 93 percent. That is quite likely not only a matter of technological efficiency, but it shows how far we have to go. For one thing, Canada does not bar felons and ex-felons from voting.
Upgrading registration, making it more efficient and accurate and cheaper in the long run, obviously would require some upfront investment in equipment, software and training, something states are hard-pressed to take on at the moment. But the pay-off would be large. Costs could easily be covered by quite modest federal grants.
There are other issues regarding registration, too. Same-day registration ought to be accommodated everywhere. This could be done with an extra laptop or two available at each precinct. Or simply by allowing eligible citizens to register online via their mobile devices while they stand in line at their precinct. For those who think that same-day registration would lead to massive cases of fraud, there is a simple solution used all over the world. Have each voter dip his or her finger in indelible ink after casting a ballot. If it works in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no reason to think it can't work here. Or go even simpler. Make voting everywhere a mail-in affair.