On February 4, the Montana House passed HB 180 by a vote of 67-33. It ends the ability of unregistered voters to show up at the polling place on election day and simultaneously register and vote. The bill would require voters to have registered no later than the Friday before the election. Now the bill goes to the Senate.
This makes no sense. If there is going to be a registration period it should close long enough before an election for all the data bases to be updated. The Friday before does not seem long enough to me. Otherwise, just leave same day registration alone and enfranchise last minute voters.
This bill had been amended. The original bill called for a 30 day closing. In a previous session the Clerks and Recorders supported another like bill. Our first election with same day voting was pretty hectic. The incumbent Republican Senator Conrad Burns lost to a Democrat. The loss was a combination of the Libertarian candidate getting over 10,000 votes and the ability of the Democrats to get people out to vote because of election day registration.
So is the amended bill called “The Republican Incumbent Protection Act”? Seems like a pretty weak reason to make changes to me.
The bill could use a new name. Here is a link to the bill which should include Audio of the hearing. HB 180
http://laws.leg.mt.gov/laws11/law0210W$BSIV.ActionQuery?P_BILL_DFT_NO5=LC0838&Z_ACTION=Find
If you do registration beforehand, you have clerks who handle registration on a regular basis, and can enter identification in a database, and find out if there is another registration in the county, and likely the state. It is easy enough to get the voting rolls printed by Tuesday.
On election day you are going to have people lined up to vote, and you are going to have someone who only does an election once every 2 years, trying to figure out how to register someone. There is a possibility that such folk won’t keep provisional votes separate. They may reason that any invalid provisional votes won’t be counted, and won’t figure out that once the ballot goes in the ballot box, you can’t tell which were provisional.
What percentage of provisional ballots get screwed up — due to the person involved NOT being a qualified Elector ???
See the Ohio judge chaos regarding provisional ballots.
What EVIL MORON dreamed up provisional ballots — to add more chaos into the election systems in the U.S.A. ???
“On election day you are going to have people lined up to vote, and you are going to have someone who only does an election once every 2 years, trying to figure out how to register someone.”
Oh bull! If they know how to to their job this is not a problem. It’s really not that difficult. If it is a problem then perhaps they need to be better trained, of perhaps they are are too stupid to do the job and they should be fired.
#7 When are you going to fire them? During an election? Maybe you can just have that location shut down for a few hours why you do retraining.