Meteor Blades
wrote earlier in the week about the Pew Center on the State's
study detailing the problems the antiquated voter registration system most states use, and the subsequent crappy voter lists most states are working with. He summed up their findings:
• 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some 24 million registration records, or nearly 13 percent of the national total, are estimated to be inaccurate or no longer valid.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.
While the Pew Center findings did not suggest any kind of voter fraud or voter suppression from these problems, they did suggest the need for the U.S. to get serious—and modern—about how it conducts elections. To that end, the Brennan Center for Justice
has a plan featuring:
- Automated Registration: State election officials automatically register consenting eligible citizens by electronically transmitting reliable information from other government lists.
- Portability: Once an eligible citizen is on a state’s voter rolls, she remains registered and her records move with her so long as she continues to reside in that state.
- Safety Net: Eligible citizens can correct errors on the voter rolls before and on Election Day.
- Online Access: Voters can register, check and update their registration records through a secure and accessible online portal.
If Republican state legislators and secretaries of state were truly concerned about the integrity of the vote, they'd be pursuing these policies. Of course, they're not concerned with the integrity of the vote. They're concerned about letting as few people as possible vote.
For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.
In other news:
- Right-wing Judicial Watch and even Righter-wing King Street Patriots have joined forces in what they call True the Vote, a project which will "clean up the voter rolls." It appears to be more oriented toward voter intimidation:
Catherine Engelbrecht, the president of King Street Patriots, said during the group’s summit that she is hoping to mobilize teams of three people to watch over every voting precinct in the country. That would add up to roughly 1 million right-wing tea party volunteers nationwide by the 2012 general election, the Independent reported.
They've announced the states they will be targeting in particular: Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Florida, Alabama, California, and Colorado.
- In Kansas, a proposal from Secretary of State Kris Kobach to accelerate enforcement of a new law that requires potential voters to prove their citizenship moved forward in the House. Yes, that's the same Kris Kobach who authored and pushed Arizona and Alabama's extreme anti-immigration laws. The requirement is already on the books, but Kobach wants its implementation moved up a year, to prevent as many people as possible from voting in November's election.
- The Michigan Senate passed a package of bills to make voter registration and voting more onerous, including requiring photo ID for registration, and extensive training for volunteers registering people to vote. They will also require voters to affirm they are U.S. citizens (because so many people in the county illegally want to draw attention to themselves by doing something as official as trying to register to vote).
- A voter ID bill advanced in Minnesota's senate, passed by the majority Republican Local Government and Elections Committee. It moves on to the State Government Innovation and Veterans Committee, where it's likely to pass again, despite strong activist opposition.
- For a bit of good news, Paul Schurick, campaign manager for former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., was sentenced for his part in a voter suppression scheme. He got off pretty lightly with a suspended sentence, 30 days of home detention, and 500 hours of community service. Hopefully that community service will involve working in minority communities.