Say the federal government passed a law requiring any adult person eligible to vote to register if they wanted to receive federal or state monetary benefits (food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, “welfare” in whatever form, etc.). Or a state passed such a law relating to state benefits or perhaps obtaining a driver’s license. No one would be required to vote or otherwise participate in the political process, just register. Would such a law pass muster?
IANAL, but have had informal discussions with lawyers here in Minnesota about this. (We were actually talking about requiring not just registration, but actually showing up and voting.)
The consensus was that under our Constitution:
- it’s not legal to make non-voting a crime in itself.
- it’s not legal to deny ‘entitlements’ to non-voters. (Things that people are entitled to under the law, like enrollment in public schools, use of public parks, public financial assistance, etc.)
- it’s of questionable legality to deny ‘priviledges’ to non-voters. (Driving on public roads was the common example.)
- it would be legal to deny ‘endowments’ from the state to non-voters. (Examples would be any tax refunds or rebates, homeowners property tax credits, renters tax credit, etc.
This is all opinion, of course. None of this has ever been tested in court, since we’ve never passed a law implementing anything like this.
It goes on elsewhere.
Whenever my wife and her sister go to Brazil, they have to do some beurocratic thing that gets them off the hook for having missed elections in their homeland while living their lives in the U.S. of A.
Indeed. Australian citizens are required by law to enrol to vote once they turn 18. This has been the situation since 1911.
But in practice all they have to do is show up at a polling station and put a ballot in a box. The secret ballot (invented in Australia) makes it impossible to tell who’s actually voting and who’s submitting a blank ballot.
I’ll be interested in what the various legal and illegal eagles have to say here, but I would like it if everyone were automatically registered to vote when they got their driver’s license. There should be no impediments at all to voting, even including having to register - which is a pretty minor impediment, I admit, and everyone who is old enough to do it should be enfranchised virtually automatically. Registration that accompanies driver’s licensing would be a pretty easy way to do it. We continue to have embarrassingly low voter turnout in this oh-so-wonderful democracy that we brag about here. We could be a bit prouder about it if more people participated in it, and one good way to participate in it is by voting. We should make it as easy as possible to do so. xo, C.
You do not need to be a citizen to have a driver’s license. And I think felons can have driver’s licenses if there still are any states that do not allow felons to vote.
There are lots and lots and lots of people who do not have drivers licenses, though, because they don’t drive. Consider New York City.
Speaking as a Midwesterner, having fewer New Yorkers voting might be a blessing. 
I think in Belgium if you didn’t show up at the poll you were fined 50 bucks or something. And election days were real federal holidays so few people could say they had to be at work. I think it was a pretty good system.
I haven’t looked into this for a long while, so things’ve probably changed, but isn’t it required for every male in the US to register with Selective Service once they turn 18 in order to enter them into the draft lottery database? I know I knocked that out when I first registered to vote, but my memory keeps insisting that the two were inseperable, so if you signed up for Selective Service, as the law required you to, you also signed up to vote. I also seem to recall that it’s needed not only for men of military age to vote, but to also access a whole host of other potential goodies from the government.
If that’s the case, then don’t we already have such a law in place, at least in regards to men?
By law, in the UK, you must register to vote. Every year the local council send out a form to every address and the penalty for not filling details of people eligible to vote on this form is £1000. This doesn’t mean everyone DOES register to vote, but it does become a pain if you want to do certain things like get a mortgage.
However, you are not required to actually vote. No need to turn up to any polling booths if you don’t want to.