Three North Carolina state Senators have taken aim at the “mom and apple pie” of voter registration policies. Apparently their bill to ban videos of cute kittens on YouTube is still in the works.
The bill introduced yesterday would eliminate Same Day Registration, a sensible and well-used policy that allows people to register to vote or update their voter registration at early voting sites and then immediately cast their ballot.
About 250,000 North Carolinians used Same Day Registration in 2008, and it serves as a great fail-safe for voters who move, don’t appear on the rolls due to clerical errors, or have missed the arbitrary mail-in voter registration deadline.
Fun fact: the states with Same Day Registration have the highest voter turnout rates in the country. In fact, they historically have turnout that is 10 to 12 percentage points higher than those without it. North Carolina saw a sharp rise in voter turnout after Same Day Registration was implemented in 2007.
Naturally, this must be stopped.
Second, this bill would end “pre-registration” in North Carolina. Can you imagine anything more insidious or evil than allowing 16 and 17 year-olds to register to vote and then automatically activating their voter status when they turn 18? Neither can the sponsors of this bill. Like Same Day Registration, pre-registration has been shown to be an effective way to increase youth turnout. The horror.
Are there a few other gems in this bill? You bet! It would ban voting on Sunday in North Carolina (no more “souls to the polls” after church). And it would shorten the early voting period and limit the hours that early voting locations are open.
Couple this legislation with a bill that would require all voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the polls – including the 500,000 currently registered North Carolina voters and tens of thousands of students who don’t have one of the types of ID cards the new law would require – and I’m starting to think that there are some politicians who want to make it harder for people to vote.
By the way, last week, Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana vetoed a bill that would have eliminated Same Day Registration in his state. He did it with a branding iron. It was sweet and caputred on video.
Unfortunately, we are seeing threats to Same Day Registration in other states, including in Wisconsin and Maine. It is a war on voting, gang. Click here to join the fight to stop it.
Tags: Montana, north carolina, photo ID, pre-registration, same day registration, suppression is un-American
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Thomas Bates Bio: Thomas is Rock the Vote's Vice President of Civic Engagement. @BatesThomas Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com |
