Democrats Vote on a Thoroughly Undemocratic Ballot Question on Tuesday
Both parties head to the polls for their primaries tomorrow and along with that comes a series of ballot questions.
Georgia’s Democrats are blessed to have four questions get to vote on four questions, Republicans only one.
The fourth question for Democrats is an undemocratic one:
Should Georgia automatically register to vote all legal and permanent residents upon issuance of a driver’s license or state-issued ID which includes an opt-out provision?
Democrats throughout the U.S. want automatic voter registration because among other things, many of their key constituencies lag far behind other groups in terms of voter registration. But this should not be done.
While America’s voter participation levels are risibly pathetic and must increase somehow, a healthy democracy can only be one in which no voters are coerced by the state to participate. And while this measure would allow for an opt-out procedure, almost undoubtedly automatic voter registration would be nearly impossible to avoid. Tipping a system so that the state has essentially all the power is the start to an undemocratic system*.
So then what’s a better solution to our democratic system? Making the voting process easier. Have vote by mail. Have a national holiday to vote. Drop our slavish, absurd adherence to 18th-century agrarian lifestyles that have no bearing on our contemporary world and move elections to a Saturday. Or alter the concept of voter registration by not making registration mandatory or instituting same-day registration.
*I do not think this is the first step to tyranny, just that it is philosophically bad. And spare me the tripe that we live in a republic, not a democracy. While technically true it is also wrong because we live in a republic that is based on democracy.
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Automatically registering people to vote just removes a barrier from participation. No one is being forced to vote. If you want to never show up to a polling place that’s your right. Voting should be made as easy as possible, and this helps do that. It’s pretty absurd to want to continually place road blocks in front of getting more folks to vote.
Well I did give five options that would make it easier to vote than anything involving our current voter-registration process so I don’t think you can say I’m really interested in putting up more barriers.
Automatically registering people is one of the best ways to remove barriers.
Even better is no real registration which solves both of our issues which is a small part in how to improve our democracy.
You bring up many good solutions, but I don’t really see how automatic registration is forcing anyone to do anything. They arent being forced to provide any extra information, what is so un-Democratic about this? I don’t have any data to back this up, but my guess would be that there are more people not registered because of ignorance of what they need to do, rather then because of a conscious decision to.
Everything you say is valid, the concerns are that were such a system in place, I have no doubt that opt-out option would be buried at the end or somehow conveniently hidden. Because of how private and important each citizen’s vote is, I just believe that everyone should have as much autonomy from the state as possible when choosing how or if they wish to participate in any democracy.
I’m also willing to say I’m probably an extreme minority with my beliefs and that’s fine.
I agree, that could definitely be a problem, but it seems like we could figure out a way to make sure that doesn’t happen.
I’m fine with one person, one vote in regards to race, religion, creed, national origin, etc. Why would a person who cannot be convicted of a crime due to mental incapacity be allowed to vote? For that matter why should a person who can’t pick the name of the sitting Vice President out of a multiple choice be allowed to vote? Just getting in a booth and using your finger at random or as told to do is more contrary to a healthy democracy than not voting at all. “Participation” should include a degree of knowledge on that which you are voting. We’ve even had commenters on the other site that claimed insider information on state politics who had never heard of the PSC.
Speaking of the PSC, any Democrats who live in PSC District 2 and have no meaningful choices in your own primary other than the stupid straw poll may want to crossover to vote in the PSC race. No Democrat is running in November so the Republican Primary is essentially the only chance for your vote to be counted.
A lot of registered voters are already voting with no knowledge and their is nothing stopping them. The percentage of voters who go to the polls now with knowledge of every race their voting in, is probably very small. I mean how many people voting for the solicitor general even knows what they do? I think the issue is we need to do a better job of educating people. Because unless your a nut like us most people don’t have the time or patience to understand who all these people are. This ballot issue won’t make a difference one way or the other in the problems you listed
Why exacerbate the problem by automatically registering anyone who gets a driver’s license, much worse a state ID because they can’t get a DL. Also a Public Service Commissioner’s vote affects most of our pocketbooks more than that of a state senator or representative as there are only 5 of them. There has been little to no publicity or debate that the incumbent Tim Echols will hardly be challenged in his quest for 6 more years. When in doubt, the ignorant invariably just select the incumbent and in the case of the PSC it invariably means the consumer loses.
I don’t see why we can’t bring more people into the process and figure out a way to educate our voters. Because having a more difficult process hasn’t made our electorate smarter. I would challenge you to go out on your street and find five random voters who can tell you what the Public Service Commission does. I live in DeKalb County where an incumbent hasn’t lost in 20 years despite being a hotbed of corruption, so I totally get your frustration. But the fact is that you have a right to vote if you an American Citizen over 18 and are not a felon. Registration exists to make sure voter fraud doesn’t take place, its not there to be a filter.
Why do you want to restrict people to solve the problem? If the problem is uninformed voters, why don’t you advocate for better information availability? You want to restrict voting rights because it’s easy. Those people mostly won’t fight back. It’s kinda like bullying!
OK, I’m guilty of interjecting one of my pet peeves against the deliberately uninformed voting thinking they are doing their civic duty by playing ennie-meenie-minee-mo in the booth. This group needs bullying.
The separate issue is that roughly 3% of our adult population has an IQ of 70 or below. Is it bullying if I suggest that we limit the vote to those out of this population who have the gumption or whose handler or spirit guide has the gumption to get them to physically register to vote? Do you really want a mentally deficient person to automatically be assigned to your jury pool?
One needs to know what additional, and perhaps unnecessary demographic is involuntarily captured by an automatic voter registration. Given Georgia’s sometimes reckless distribution of voter information, I would opt-out.
I agree with the theory of making it easier to register with driver’s license registration. In practice it may not be timely if someone is new to the state and expects to have a different address by the time they can vote.
The same day register/vote scenario is scary unless every polling place can verify prior registration and instantly nullify it to avoid a voter voting in two places on the same day.
News articles discussing the recent GA voter data sharing mistake had varying reports on what is normally shared.
Some reports stated name, address and voter frequency were only shared. Other reports stated GA regularly sells such data as age, race, and choice of primary ballot to those paying for voter data. The law states voter data is public, but voter file data may only be used by qualified campaigns and only for campaigning purposes not consumer databases or direct marketing. The Georgia Secretary of State Office has stated they cannot and will not enforce the law for anyone abusing this information.
You would opt out of voting?
I would vote. I assume the “opt-out” is to opt out of automatic registration if offered during drivers license registration. I think the manual voter registration forms give a citizen more control over filling in the required and optional information. Such privacy may not be offered in an automatic voter registration process.
“The same day register/vote scenario is scary unless every polling place can verify prior registration and instantly nullify it to avoid a voter voting in two places on the same day.”
This is easy to solve: you say we will only count the vote where the voter has the oldest registration and have some sort of punitive mechanism in place too (I don’t want to say what would be appropriate but there is some level of punishment that would work, I don’t know what). Of course, we’d also need an SSN or some other identifying number to make it work. We have parts to a solution that can work, we just need to figure out what the puzzle would be.
This is a horrible idea. I agree with your comment “that everyone should have as much autonomy from the state as possible when choosing how or if they wish to participate in any democracy.” (biting tongue… representative republic…not.. going to fight….off topic)…
Unfortunately, I see it as inevitable at some point as the evolution of technology modernizes the process. If someone isn’t motivated enough to register and learn about the issues and candidates, I would prefer they do not vote.
We all would, but it’s kind of irrelevant who you or I think should vote, it’s an American right.
“Automagically” register people to vote? What other fun, good things shall we empower our Nanny State government to do for us? Phooey. If you want to vote, make the effort.