To protect the right to vote
One of the overhyped, politically driven worries this election season is voter fraud. As many as 20 states have offered up restrictions and tests designed to weed out illegal voting, despite the lack of evidence that it exists on even a small scale. Indeed, the greater concern appears to be that an overreaction could disenfranchise eligible voters.
Many of the voter-identification laws have stalled in court because of challenges that changes are unfair to poor, elderly and minorities, groups least likely to carry official ID. But other changes have survived in ways that could turn away sizable numbers at polling places.
It’s also overtly political with Republicans — especially Tea Party zealots — pushing for tougher rules and Democrats charging that the demands for photo ID or other official plastic amount to voter suppression. Swing states such as Colorado and Pennsylvania are in the thick of these disputes where turnout will be crucial. Never mind that the reports of non-citizens casting ballots or widespread vote-rigging haven’t panned out. This is a phony furor that’s producing inane and unnecessary laws.
That’s why it’s notable that California is going in exactly the opposite direction. Two significant bills just signed into law make it easier — not harder — to vote. In matters electoral, there couldn’t be a greater gulf between this state and nearly half the nation in making the ballot more accessible.
Gov. Jerry Brown this week signed a bill that will allow Californians to register to vote on election day. By 2015 new voters may be allowed to cast a provisional ballot that will be checked against a statewide database. Right now, voter sign-ups stop 14 days before election day.
That bill follows another change allowing online registration, much quicker and easier than the present written and mailed paperwork process. In both cases, the bills were pushed by Democrats and opposed by Republicans worried about abuses.
The changes make ample good sense. “Voting — the sacred right of every citizen — should be simple and convenient,’’ Brown said in signing the same-day voting law. Up to a quarter of California’s eligible voters, some 6.5 million, aren’t on the rolls, a figure that diminishes the scale of public decisions and civic involvement.
But don’t expect these rosy arguments to carry the day elsewhere in the country where suspicion and partisanship is threatening the vote. It’s an affront to democracy, a course that California is wise to avoid.