Election clock ticking
With genuine concerns being raised about the security of the election process itself, the timing could not be worse for tinkering with voter registration procedures here — let alone asking the state’s highest court to simply chuck out the existing system.
Yet that’s the pitch made Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts to the Supreme Judicial Court. The ACLU maintains that the current requirement that voters register 20 days before an election isn’t merely an inconvenience or a matter for the Legislature to perhaps shorten, it’s unconstitutional, they insist — and ought to be tossed out entirely.
“There is no evidence that this 20-day voter registration cutoff law is necessary, warranted or even rational,” ACLU lawyer Jessie Rossman told the court.
Chief Justice Ralph Gants repeatedly questioned both sides in the dispute about what exactly would be the appropriate number of days — would 19 work? — and what exactly was the remedy they were seeking.
But as Justice Scott Kafker put it, “Having an orderly election is clearly rational.
“I don’t know if you need 20 or 15 or 10, but those are the types of decisions we leave to the Legislature,” he added.
Indeed they are, and this end run around the Legislature isn’t particularly helpful.
Secretary of State William Galvin and Attorney General Maura Healey, who both favor same-day voter registration, were in the bizarre position of defending the constitutionality of the existing law while insisting it should be changed.
“Nobody wants disorderly elections, and long lines and confusion,” argued Assistant State Solicitor David Kravitz in defense of the existing law. “That doesn’t serve anybody’s interests.”
Early voting, first implemented in 2016, adds yet another degree of difficulty for local election officials trying to maintain some semblance of order in a process increasingly put at risk by foreign forces who would do anything to undermine the credibility of the U.S. election system.
Now is surely not the time for the court or the Legislature to make that any easier to accomplish.