In almost every one of the 22 states holding a primary election or caucus on February 5, democracy's door has already swung shut. With the most exciting presidential primary of the last two decades less than two weeks away, the new voters, the unregistered, those just now getting inspired and engaged in democracy's greatest opportunity and those who have moved since they last voted are now officially locked out of the primaries and caucuses.
What a shame.
It's illegal to register to vote for the primary at this point. It's illegal to register at your new address. This is a problem that should be at the top of our agenda to fix in the 43 states legislatures that do not extend same-day voter registration rights to their citizens. Can the netroots rise to fix this problem?
On February 5, potentially as many as half a million people will try to vote and be turned away. (No data to prove that, as the government doesn't keep records of the people who show up at their precinct polling place and ask if they are permitted to help elect their leaders and politely but firmly told to take a hike because they didn't register with the government ahead of time. But I'm confident that the numbers are significant. If it's a few people in each precinct, and we've got 100,000 or so precincts in the 22 states of Tsumani Tuesday, you can do the math).
In this day and age, there is simply no good reason to continue to disenfrachise people who want to vote.
And if you're concerned about voter fraud, then you're largely chasing a ghost. There just isn't any significant voter fraud in the United States due to same-day voter registration. Read the report from the Brennan Center for Justice on the topic, or from Demos before instinctively reacting with the fear of fraud.
Citizens deserve the right to pick the people who run the government, no matter when they decide to register to vote.
We ought to have a federal law to cover federal elections (something President Jimmy Carter proposed during his administration) and we ought to have campaigns in each of the 43 states to pass state legislation for same-day registration.
Will the Netroots Nation rise up to demand same-day voter registration rights from our elected officials? Count me in. How about you?