Securing right to vote

Timing is often everything when it comes to legislation. And the simple fact is that the timing of bills to move Massachusetts to a system of Automatic Voter Registration couldn’t be worse.

Now we’ve long maintained that no one should have to be led by the hand to exercise the right to vote. Registering to vote is already incredibly easy and relatively quick and there is no excuse for not doing so — other than ignorance, laziness or lack of interest. (And there’s surely a case to be made that if you are too ill-informed to know how to register, how well-informed a voter will you make anyway?)

But Common Cause Massachusetts along with a gaggle of progressive organizations really can’t leave well enough alone, and so once again are trying to get the Legislature to advance a system of Automatic Voter Registration. The bills in question would make it the responsibility of the state to register eligible individuals whenever they interact with a state agency. The most obvious one, of course, would be the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Go in for a license and you would be automatically registered — unless you proactively decline to do so.

Common Cause, making one final push for the proposal as the legislative year comes to an end, insists, “Automatic voter registration helps ensure the security of voter data and the integrity of elections. Since people update their address information more frequently with the Registry of Motor Vehicles than with the local Boards of Election, AVR will make voting lists more current and accurate.”

Hmm. About the RMV. Apparently Common Cause assumes we all have short memories.

It was just last August that four registry clerks and two outside accomplices were arrested on federal charges of conspiring to help illegal immigrants get false identifications — some of which were used to register to vote in Boston.

Just think, AVR would have saved them that extra step.

Problems at the Registry are nothing new. In 2013 an employee was accused of creating 200 fake IDs.

Just when it’s most essential to guarantee the security of our voting system, this proposal would take it in the opposite direction.