Voting Made (Not So) Easy

One of the most exciting things about turning 18 is being able to voice your opinion about important issues and having a say in who will lead your city, state and country. All you have to do to exercise this right is fill out a form, mail it in and boom – you can be a part of the decision making process, right?

Unfortunately, registering to vote is not as simple as that. Registration can be confusing and frustrating.  I found this out as I did a little bit of research on helping high school students to register to vote as a part of Rock the Vote’s Democracy Class initiative.

While states are required to accept a national voter registration form, each state has individual particularities about how it wants things done. For example, South Carolina requires voters to provide their entire Social Security number, while Kansas only requests a driver’s license or the last four digits of one’s social security number.

The nuances don’t stop at the difference between Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers. Even the number of days before an election one must register to vote varies from state to state. Whether or not you have to register with a particular party to vote in the primary depends on your state, too. If you’re from the Lone Star State you don’t have to register with a particular party to vote in the primary, but if you’re from the Sunshine State you do. When filling out the national voter registration form, some states specifically request that one fills out the race and ethnicity blank and others specifically request that those registering leave this field blank, but of course that isn’t printed on the form. Voters are forced to look up these rules online or call the state board of elections.

And in some cases, like New Hampshire, you can’t even use the national form or mail in an application.  You have to go to your town clerk’s office.

The more research I did the more frustrating I found voter registration. Why should it be difficult for any eligible citizen to vote? There must be a simpler way to do this. Why can’t all states follow the lead of the states who have implemented online voter registration, like Colorado, Oregon, and Washington?  Or allowing people to register to vote on Election Day, like in Wisconsin and Montana?  Or eliminating voter registration entirely, like North Dakota?

It is difficult to understand why citizens have to jump through hoops in order to exercise their right to vote. Shouldn’t the government be begging people to turn out in larger numbers? Instead third party registration groups spend a lot of time, money and energy sifting through the variety of constantly changing rules for each state in hopes of a higher voter turnout.

It is easy to see why these rules and regulations perpetuate low voter turnout. When the answers aren’t readily available, or when the information isn’t straightforward, people simply quit. These voter registration issues prevent people, particularly young people, from showing up at the polls in large numbers. There must be a way to fix this, a better way to handle voter registration. There must be a way that encourages people to take advantage of their democratic rights, after all that’s what being American is all about.

To learn more about restrictions on voters and to join the movement to fight back against these unnecessary rules and regulations, visit us at http://www.rockthevote.com/campaigns/suppression/

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Kristin Andrews Bio: Kristin is Rock the Vote's Communications Intern Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, voter registration, voter suppression. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.