On July 30, the Massachusetts legislature passed the bill for automatic voter registration, which is now HB 4834. Automatic voter registration helps groups and candidates that must petition to be on the ballot. It means that petition validity improves.
What if you don’t want to be registered? Isn’t this government force?
Only helps in cases where there is a fixed number of signatures required, not a percentage of those registered.
Lord of the Rings rules. There should be a LOTR trivia test as qualification for every voter.
“What if you don’t want to be registered? Isn’t this government force?”
I’ve heard that similar bills in other states have included provisions where a person can opt out of being registered to vote.
West Virginia has something similar now whereby your voter registration is qued-up when applying for a drivers licence, but motorists are given a choice of either accepting or declining. If they accept, then they are given the option of selecting a party. If no party is selected, they are registered as unaffiliated (often incorrectly termed “independent”). THE RESULT is that voter registration figures are completely skewed, most people registered unaffiliated (no party) don’t vote (largely because they are uninterested/uninformed), and thus our voter turnout numbers are artificially low.
Really need to get the government out of this business. Way to many election laws!
Larry, there are almost no states that set the number of signatures as a percentage of the registered voters. The general pattern is either a fixed number of signatures, or a percentage of the last vote cast for some particular office.
@Keith,
It is federal law that when someone interacts with a state government agency, such as the DMV, that they be offered the opportunity to register to vote.
The problem is that the DMV really doesn’t want to be involved. So initially they would hand someone a registration form. They might forget to send the completed form to election officials. Someone who had been waiting in line for 2-1/2 hours might decide they had enough interaction with the government, People might think that registering to vote will get you on jury duty. They might mess up filling out a paper form. They probably care about having the correct address on their driver’s license. They don’t care about their voter registration. They might think they are already registered. So while Motor Voter should capture a large share of the adult population, it actually doesn’t.
The DMV does not do the registration. In Massachusetts, voter registration is done by towns and cities, so the DMV would turn the applications over to towns and cities for registration. But Massachusetts does have a statewide registration roll (this is a federal requirement).
What the new legislation would do is turn the DMV into an “automatic” voter registration agency. In this case, the term /automatic/ is borrowed from the term used in other states. The DMV would actually do the registration, including checking whether the person is already registered at the current or another address. Any new registrations or changes would be turned over to the SOS and distributed to the cities or towns.
A person could decline to be registered. But it is conceivable that the application might be automatically generated. If you are handed a form, and the clerk indicates you won’t get your license unless you complete it, you may sign it. If you say you don’t want to be registered to vote, the clerk might point to the check box, but say that you have to sign the form, to indicate your affirmative declination. Whether you fill out the party box is also optional.
In Oregon, the process is a little different. Interactions with the DMV are turned over to the SOS, and potential registrants are identified. The SOS then sends out a postcard to the new voter, and tells them if they don’t return the post card within 21 days, they will be registered to vote. In addition, the new voter is offered the option to register with a party if they return the post card (if the post card is returned after 21 days, it is honored, but statistics are based on the 21-day return. Since the program has been in effect (since 2016) only 12% of voters have affiliated with a party – including Democratic, Republican, and Independent parties. About 6% of persons have opted out.
Ordinarily, there is an increase in registration in presidential election years, followed by a decline in registration in the following years, as voters are purged. In 2016 in Oregon, the increase in registration was particularly pronounced in 2016, compared to 2012, 2008, etc; and there was a further increase in registration in 2017, and so far in 2018.
So there has been increase in the number of persons registered to vote. But the new “voters” are much more likely to be unaffiliated with a party, or to vote. The 2018 primary had the lowest turnout percentage (or perhaps turn-in under a VBM election) since at least 1960, but also the highest number of ballots cast in a mid-term primary. The increase in ballots may be due to population growth rather than the newly registered voters.
See the statutory definition of juror in most/all States — being a registered Elector.
Lots of folks from the CA Soviet Socialist Republic escaping to OR ???
In Texas since the late 1980s, jury wheels have included registered voters and persons with drivers licenses (persons were not registering because they didn’t want to be on a jury).
But the effect is that they have to call more people. If before they had to call 100 people to get 50 to show up, they now have to call 150 people to get 50 to show up. In general, they don’t track down people who don’t show up, because it would be a waste of time to prosecute them, and they would probably make lousy jurors.
So- how many Foreign invaders on juries in Texas ???
What will happen if a TOTAL Militia callup is demanded by Trump —
to stop those foreign invaders, fight N Korea, Iran, Syria, China, Russia, Mexico, Canada, EU, etc. ???
NO body shows up ???
I don’t think that Trump has authority to call up the Texas militia.
From time to time, a potential juror will claim to not be a US citizen. Before he is excused, he will be questioned by a judge, and swear an oath that he is not a citizen. This information is sent over to the voter registrar. Recently, the voter registrar in Harris County, a Democrat, has been failing to not remove said person from the voter rolls.
There was a close election, when it was found that a non-citizen had voted (when there is a close election, and start scratching the surface all kinds of irregularities turn up). In this case, the voter had checked the box that he was not a US citizen and been registered nonetheless. In Texas, there is no right to a secret ballot if you did not vote legally. Often, those non-voters who had marked a ballot, can not remember who they voted for.