The Montgomery County Democratic Party has organized some voter registration at subway stops in Maryland. I live very close to one, so I have been spending a couple of hours a few nights a week registering voters
Maryland is very safe for Obama, so most of the effort has gone toward canvassing and phone banking in Virginia. I have done a lot of that, too, but I thought I would devote some time to registering voters, as well. I have been surprised at how many people had not registered! I have been getting about a dozen people an evening.
I have been getting a lot of questions from people about voting and I decided to make some absentee ballot applications, as well. Many people asked how to find out if they are registered? The Maryland Board of Elections has a neat link on their web site that lets you find out if you are registered. I took my laptop one night to see if I could hook into a nearby wifi link so that we could do that on the spot. No luck with that, unfortunately.
A number of people told me that they registered through the Motor Vehicle Administration, but had not heard anything months after they had applied. That's worrisome, but there wasn't much that I could do about it.
Yesterday, one man asked me who I was working for? I told him that I was associated with the local Democratic party. He commented about that he had been reading about how there were organizations improperly registering voters. I assumed he was talking about the allegations against ACORN.
From my experience, there are many mistakes that people can make while filling out the application. On the Maryland form, the instructions state that the form must be filled out in black! I had plenty of black pens, but some people gave me forms that they had already printed out, the generic registration form. Some of these were done in blue. I had one person redo her form, but another had one that her husband had done. It was mostly done on computer, so it was black, but his signature was blue. I have no idea how the Board of Elections will react to that.
The last two days have been very busy. I have generated over 40 applications by myself. Monday the 14th is the last day to register and I know that many people who want to register will not be able to. I wish that I could spend the next three days just registering people, but I will go back to Virginia on Sunday and leave my registration activities for this cycle.
I have thought about how difficult it is to register. It's much easier than it was a few years ago, but it is still too difficult. I can see why registration is closed a few weeks prior to the election in order process the applications and notify people where their polling place is. Still, the systems can be modernized in order to make this quicker.
I was approached by a German woman who told me that in Germany, citizens were automatically registered. There must be some way that any U.S. citizen with a driver's license or state ID can can be automatically registered. Of course, if someone moves and has not changed their address, it could be a problem. In states like Maryland where convicted felons cannot vote while they are incarcerated, a match of those serving their sentences and voters would need to be performed, but that is not difficult technologically.
In North Dakota, citizens need not register to vote, but that state's laws are predicated on the fact that the state is largely rural with a small population, so that precinct workers can easily verify whether someone is a resident or not. In more populated areas, this might not work.
Today, one of our state senators had a group giving out Obama yard signs at the Metro. I wrote him an e-mail stating my concerns about voter registration. I made a couple of suggestions that I hope that he will pursue to make the voter registration process in Maryland more automatic, or at least easier and more efficient.
One last thought. I got many thanks from people as I sat there. I was gratified by their comments. I also got great satisfaction from registering these people. I registered a number of young people and two girls who had just become citizens. I didn't need any thanks from anyone. All the payment I needed was the satisfaction of helping people exercise their rights!