Reformers urge move to universal voter registration

Government would take lead in a new system

Busy election workers in Columbus, Ohio, sorted out absentee ballots last week. (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON - The nation's much-maligned election system passed a major test last week when more than 132 million Americans, a record total, cast ballots with few reports of problems.

But now, election reformers are calling for a move toward a "universal voter registration" system, in which the government takes the lead in ensuring that all eligible citizens are registered.

"This means the registration process would no longer serve as a barrier to the right to vote," said Wendy R. Weiser, lawyer for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. "It would also eliminate the ACORN issue and all the gaming of the system."

In the United States, unlike other major democracies, citizens, not the government, are responsible for seeing to it that they are registered. And when they move, even if just across town, they must update their registration.

In 2004, more than 1 in 4 American adults was not on the voter rolls. Since then, private organizations such as the League of Women Voters and activist groups such as ACORN, which advocates for people in low-income communities, launched major voter-registration drives. These groups do not put voters on the rolls. They turn in applications from people who sign forms saying they want to register.

But ACORN, among others, was criticized for submitting a huge number of registration cards with questionable information and cards from people who were already registered.

"All across America, our people wasted untold hours dealing with duplicate registrations," said R. Doug Lewis, executive director of the National Association of Election Officials.

Many more Americans encounter a more mundane problem - failing to update their registration after they move.

"The current system is simply not designed for a mobile society," the Brennan Center said in its report on universal voter registration.

Under its proposal, states could update their computerized voter rolls when residents move from one city to another. And they could add new voters who move to the state and apply for new driver's licenses.

Under some proposals, teens would be automatically added to the voter rolls when they turn 18. Under some plans, Congress could create a national voter registration roll, modeled after the Social Security database. Others say states should take the lead in expanding and improving their voter rolls. "Registration reform will be the big issue going forward," said Doug Chapin of Electionline.org. "All this last-minute litigation has heightened the concern that we need to consider a universal or automatic voter-registration system."

Tuesday's voting followed weeks of lawsuits and skirmishing over the voter rolls, when Republicans voiced fears of massive fraud and Democrats were worried about the possible purging of tens of thousands of voters.

Senator Hillary Clinton, Democrat of New York, has said she plans to introduce legislation to move toward automatic voter registration, and state officials in Minnesota, Oregon, and New York have expressed interest in adopting it in state law, according to Brennan Center officials.

Some election officials question whether a national system would gain support.

"We will need to think hard about this. It's true that in most developed democracies, the government takes on this role, and it's a top-down system. But ours has been a bottom-up system, because our founders were suspicious of a centralized election authority," said Lewis, whose group represents state and county election officials.

Several watchdog groups say this year's focus on the voter rolls helped resolve problems before Election Day.

In Colorado and Michigan, judges acting in response to lawsuits restored thousand of voters to the rolls days before the election. In Florida, county officials agreed to work out problems of voters whose driver's licenses did not precisely match data on the registration rolls.

"Because a lot of work was done on the front end, we were able to avoid major meltdowns," said Tova Wang of Common Cause.