You're not voting
Democracy NC says you're not voting (pdf):
A new "Civic Participation Index for North Carolina" shows that only two out of five adults [40.8 percent] bother to vote in the typical state election.The Index says that young North Carolinians age 18 to 25 are half as likely to vote as their grandparents - and more likely to engage in binge drinking than participate in elections.
Pretty much any elections director will tell you the same thing.
The release appears to be sent out in support of the same day voter registration bill.
Comments (1)
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Don't drinking and voting often get tied together?
(Just kidding).
Will the new slogan for the SBOE be:
"Voting Ought to Be As Easy As Falling Off a Bar-stool"
Seriously, the bill for Same Day Registration holds some promise, and some head-aches -for election officials who have to find poll workers to handle the extra work.
There is a reason for the current 25 day cutoff period for voter registration. (Some states have a shorter cutoff period).
If you were to interview a few different election directors, you would get a grounded viewpoint of just exactly why there is the cutoff.
Election Boards have use the 25 day cutoff period for processing the registration, and to send out a verification card to the address provided by the voter on the registration form. If the card is returned, then the county boe sends out a second one via certified mail. If the "voter" does not pick up that certified verification form, then the BOE has reason to believe that the voter does not live at that address, and the voter is not added to the registration roll. This process takes a few weeks to do.
Ask some election directors, but ask more than one. Some counties like Wake and Guilford use laptops or electronic poll books to check voters in, this is a sizable investment. Most counties use a paper poll book check in system, and will not have live online access to the database. Some election officials have concerns about letting pollworkers have access to the database.
But, if Same Day Registration is done only during early voting, there are some safeguards, because there is time to deal with the extra voters who show up to not only vote, but register. Often these voters would have been given a provisional ballot (which would later be disallowed), so instead the poll worker's time is spent registering the voter, and giving them a real ballot.
Please know, the early voted ballot is retrievable and can be removed if for some reason any voter has voted elsewhere or at another time for that election.
The problem I see with the Same Day Registration bill is this - if the first round of SDR, done during early voting - goes well, then the State Board of Elections wants to extend it to election day too, where there ARE no checks and balances to prevent error, fraud, and long lines at the polls. The long lines are what worry me the most.
Done during early voting, Same Day Registration might be a good thing. Not because people are so lazy they wait till the last minute to register, but because our voter registration database kicks out eligible voters (because of name mispellings, typos, other database errors). See my report on North Carolina's "No Match No Register" here
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/No_Match_No_Register.pdf
The State Board of Elections has proven that it can handle difficult and large scale projects very well, like the massive implementation of the new voting machines in a very short time.
Don Wright, the General Counsel for the SBOE promises me that they can roll out Same Day Registration in that same professional and secure manner. The only major disagreement we have is that I believe SDR should be limited to early voting, if the legislation passes.
Posted on April 3, 2007 8:23 PM