Zakim calls for same-day voter registration

Boston City Councilor Josh Zakim joined Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” program yesterday to discuss his decision to run for secretary of state.

Q: As you saw yesterday, Secretary of State Bill Galvin is talking about his pushback in terms of your candidacy. He mentioned that you were the lowest vote-getter among city councilors.

A: I think it’s important in a democracy that we talk about the issues and that we talk about opening up the process, opening up our voting process, our public records, being more transparent as a government. And that’s why I’m running in this race and that’s what I’ve been talking about since Day 1. In the commonwealth of Massachusetts, we should be leading on issues of inclusion and access, making it easier for people to register to vote and to vote on Election Day, and that’s come out of the work I’ve done as chair of the City Council Committee on Civil Rights, which I’ve been proud to lead over the past year . ... People deserve equal representation, they deserve access to the ballot box and we need the state’s chief elections officer to be an advocate for that, to make sure that we are clearing that path, to make sure that people feel included. If we’re going to transform the way people talk about politics and government in Massachusetts, we need to bring more people in ... that’s what we need to be talking about in this campaign, we don’t need to be slinging personal insults in the newspapers.

Q: How are people not included now?

A: Right now there’s a 20-day voter registration deadline in Massachusetts and that was recently struck down by a superior court judge over the summer and (Galvin) is appealing that right now to keep the 20-day deadline in place. What I have heard over and over again, including in the hearings we have had in the Civil Rights Committee in the Boston City Council, is that that is a burden on people and obviously the superior court judge agreed. But one of the biggest issues, and people often don’t think about this, is that we have a lot of people, thousands and thousands of people, both in my district and across the state, who move on Sept. 1. When leases expire, people are moving ... and many primaries, both city, state, and federal, are within 20 days of that date. With this current deadline, you cannot vote in those primaries, people are being disenfranchised and as the superior court found, this is arbitrary and unconstitutional under Massachusetts law.

There is not one good reason for us not to have same-day registration in Massachusetts.