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Voter registrations has become a hot-potato subject in the past elections. Each party has used registrations in different ways to compete for office. Republicans tend to try to use the system to eliminate Democrat voters while Democrats tend to use the system to register more voters. The losers are the American citizens caught in the cross fire and sometimes fighting for their right to vote.
There should be no fight to vote and no one should be contesting any citizen who chooses to exercise that right. It should be a non-issue. But for as long as there have been politics there have been people trying to manipulate the system to their advantage to the detriment of the average voter.
I believe in the following and wish to open the dialogue on this subject with an eye toward presenting Congress and the administration with our suggestions.
1) Universal suffrage in Federal Elections. Put simply, if you are a US Citizen you have a right to and are registered vote. Period. No exclusion for felony convictions etc. except perhaps for convictions for treason and election related crimes. States should be excluded from federal funding for elections if they fail to apply same standards to state and local elections.
2) Universal registration. As a citizen when you apply for a driver license, a passport, a state or military ID you are automatically registerd to vote. No exceptions and no separate database to match against voter registration records. These just induce errors. One database only please.
3) Central database of voters. None of this matching drivers license information to voter registrations etc. Universal registration would mandate a single data source in each state that would be used for state ID's, licenses and other forms of state approved identifications. Passport information should be syncronized where that is the ID form used to register a voter. Social Security databases should syncronize with new births so that the identity of natural born citizens is confirmed as a valid voter at birth, updated upon reaching voting age. In other words, since you are required to obtain a social security number when born, why not include a permanent right to vote at the same time and in the same database? 4) While we are at it...let's revise how our data is stored. People shy away from "central database" of citizens but's let's be honest. We are already in central databases already and have been for eons. The problem is the lack of a central consistent database rather than scattered data that is not in sync. The Social Security database is probably the most universal. Instead of separate databases for voter registrations, another for motor vehicle registrations, yet another for medical records, school records, driver licenses etc, why not have just one. Each necessary agency uses the same database. It is actually less data than having a lot of separate databases and it makes life easier for everyone. Yes a database can contain an error. But what if that error is duplicated across multiple data sources and no one even knows where these errors have propagated, or where they came from? How would you even know who to contact if an error causes you a problem. How would you correct it? A single data point with procedures in place to challenge errors makes it simpler. As a volunteer in the past election for voter registration data entry, I found many cases where a voter's registration would not "compute" because the address information in the voter database was different from that on the voter's driver license. The difference could be nothing more than having a street in one location showing NE Ave. vs N.E. Ave. in another causing a conflict. These are often caused by a person's entering common abbreviations in different ways causing data base errors. In a single database universe these errors could not happen. Real errors could be easier to repair because the repair would not have to be carried out across multiple databases each with its own rules on making corrections.
I would like to have experts volunteer to work with ordinary citizens on writing some proposals for Congress on this issue. Please use the Contact Form to let me know who you are !
Include naturalization records so that when a person seeks and is granted citizenship status that person is automatically added to the data base as a citizen entitled to vote. If they lose that status the same database would remove that right.
The only way to make sure each citizen has the right to participate in the future of his/her nation is to assure each has the same equal right to vote. By changing registration laws to insure that every US Citizen is registered by virtue of their existence and not required to participate in any separate process, we end the disparities and challenges at each election.
Let's meet to discuss in the Voting and Elections forums.
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