The New York Times-20080124-Tune In- Drop In- Vote Now- A Simpler Path to the Polls
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Tune In, Drop In, Vote Now: A Simpler Path to the Polls
Maybe after the focus on younger voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and with all those young volunteers flocking to the Obama and Clinton campaigns, this will be a titanic election turnout for young voters when the primary circus rolls into New York, New Jersey and Connecticut before the Feb. 5 vote.
But if so, it won't include Michael Backhus, a shaggy-haired 19-year-old philosophy major at Ramapo College in New Jersey. A lot of students are just now tuning in to the political races, but in New Jersey the deadline for registering to vote in the primary drifted by on Jan. 15. (Voters still have time to register for the general election.)
I've been really busy with work and school; it's been hectic; my car broke down, Mr. Backhus said while talking heads yakked about politics on the television screens at the student dining hall. I never got around to registering.
At Ramapo, the circus also won't include Cherie Richardson of Paterson or Qurita Powell of Trenton, who both like Hillary Rodham Clinton, or Ryan Mastropole of West Milford. Jerry Leatherman of Milltown doesn't think he is registered, but, hey, who can be sure? They figure politics is like studying for tests -- you usually don't get interested until it's in your face.
Of course, if this were Iowa or New Hampshire, two of the nine states that have what's called Election Day registration, none of that would matter. In those states, you show up on Election Day with ID and proof of residency, and register and vote at the same time. Those nine states consistently have higher voter turnouts than other states.
In the 2004 presidential race, their average turnout was 12 percentage points above that of states without Election Day registration. (The higher turnouts no doubt reflect both the ease of registration and the circular logic that the states with civic traditions most conducive to political participation -- like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Maine -- also tend to have election laws that make voting most convenient.)
This may be an extraordinary political year. But, alas, this remains a country with one of the world's lowest rates of voter participation (No. 140 out of 163 countries, between Chad and Botswana, in one recent survey).
And, as usual, little of the excitement about the races -- with their outsize characters, incessant televised blather and weekly winners and losers -- has translated into discussions of the more mundane business of the mechanics of voting.
So consider, for a moment, Election Day registration, an issue that has been kicking around since at least 1974, when Maine became the first state to adopt it.
The idea is simple enough. In a country where people move all the time and where turnout is already dismal, you give people a one-stop-shopping option for registering and voting. Proponents say it would particularly assist students and other first-time voters, and those from lower-income groups, who tend to move a lot.
The obvious fear is voter fraud, but studies thus far show almost no link between fraud and Election Day registration. How many people want to risk a jail term to vote illegally? A bigger roadblock may be objections from registrars and clerks, who worry that it would lead to Election Day lines and headaches.
Still, proponents say, it's one of a handful of changes that could make a big difference if we really made it a priority to maximize voter participation.
Voting is a constitutional right, and it shouldn't be denied because of an arbitrary deadline, said Regina Eaton, a voting-rights specialist at Demos, a public policy research and advocacy organization whose priorities include voting issues. There's no reason to believe that because someone registered 30 years ago they're any more informed or engaged than someone who decides to vote on the day of the election.
Nevertheless, by the time most people in the metropolitan region tune in, the registration deadline will have long since passed. In New York, voters had to register by Jan. 11. In Connecticut, new voters can enroll in person until noon on the day before the primary.
At Ramapo, in Bergen County, there didn't seem to be much political consensus -- some for Obama; some for Clinton; a plucky Huckabee voter; one kid, God bless him, whose view of Rudolph W. Giuliani did not seem to have been affected by one snippet of information other than the pristine hero-of-9/11 narrative.
Still, every single student interviewed -- thinking of their lives and schedules, the way topics like elections pop up on their radar screen at their appointed times, the pressures of time and work -- reacted to the notion of Election Day registration with a collective duh and some degree of puzzlement about why it's so hard to do something so simple.
Fellow citizens, welcome to our world.
[Illustration]PHOTO: Students at Ramapo College, where some did not realize that the deadline for registering to vote in the New Jersey primary passed last week. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)