Foreclosure crisis and the need for universal registration
The New York Times ran a story yesterday detailing how the foreclosure crisis is threatening to disenfranchise voters in key states.
But the number of people who have moved, through foreclosure or for any other reason, far exceeds the number of people who have notified their election boards. In Ohio, 375,000 people filed change-of-address forms with the Postal Service, but when state officials sent them cards asking for updated registration information, only 24,000 responded. In Missouri, where 250,000 people notified the Postal Service of their move, only 22,000 told the election board.
Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and other election reformers have argued for a universal and portable system of registration. With universal registration, the state maintains a list of all voters and your registration is updated whenever you file a change of address form or make a change with the DMV.
Eligible citizens who have filed change of address forms with the post office or who changed their address on their drivers license should not be denied the right to vote simply because they did not file additional paperwork with an obscure county elections office.
Not only is the current system of requiring voters to reregister every time the move inconvenient, but it also shifts the burden of funding voter registration onto the non-profit community which has to reregister voters every single election cycle.
Our system for voter registration is broken and we need to fix it with a system that is universal and allows for Election Day registration.
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