PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) has just released a 37-page study of voter registration. It recommends that the United States switch to a system in which voters are registered automatically, an idea already in place in Canada. PIRG hopes to eventually have such a bill introduced in Congress.

The study highlights how much tax money is spent now on voter registration, and makes the case that automatic registration would save tax dollars.

The idea will be difficult to implement. There is no single government database that tells who is a citizen and who is not. Also it is not easy, in states which bar ex-felons from registering, to know about that variable. And because 29 states ask voters to choose a party on the voter registration form, even if automatic registration were implemented, there would be extra work involved in handling that question. Also, if the database is based on residence, that leaves the problems of homeless people, and also makes it difficult to administer situations in which some people have more than one residence.

On May 5, Illinois State Senator Terry Link filed an amendment to HB 723 that makes that bill less harmful. The bill, as passed by the House, makes it virtually impossible for a qualified party to nominate someone after the primary, by requiring such late nominees to submit a petition signed by 5% of the last vote cast. Senator Link’s amendment lowers the number of signatures. The amendment would make the petition requirement equal to the number of signatures that the candidate would have needed if he or she had filed to run in the primary in the first place. Primary petitions in Illinois generally require only about one-half of 1% of that party’s vote at the last general election.

Even if the bill gets amended, it is still burdensome. The petitions would need to be circulated between mid-February and mid-April, not good months for petitioning in states with severe winters. Also there really is no logic in requiring petitions for candidates who are chosen by committee. The rationale for petitions is to keep ballots from being crowded, but in this case there is no primary ballot.

The Daily Voice, a print/web daily newspaper in New York city which describes itself as a news source for black Americans, carries this op-ed by Lenora Fulani. The op-ed, which ran May 5, makes a case that black voters in New York city should support Mayor Mike Bloomberg for re-election, on the Independence Party line. The op-ed discusses the term limits issue. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.

Lenora Fulani was the presidential candidate of the New Alliance Party in 1988 and 1992. The New Alliance Party placed her on the ballot in all 50 states in 1988. The only other minor parties that ever placed a presidential nominee on the ballot in all the jurisdictions with electoral votes (in the last 90 years) were the Libertarian Party and the Reform Party.