Because if you look at the actual vote in Oregon that passed that measure, not a single Republican state representative voted for the measure. I’ve asked here before what makes automatic registration so partisan, but have not received any answers.
Automatic registration is a great idea, depending on the details. If a database is used and only the eligible are registered and all others must prove their eligibility with documentation, then it’s fine. If it just registers everyone eligible and everyone else can just register using the honor system, then it’s crap.
Any change in voting should make the system both more convenient AND more reliable.
Illinois’ congress just passed automatic registration at DMVs. Our esteemed Republican governor vetoed it because it would hurt his reelection chances. (He’s going down regardless, but he can dream until 2018 I guess.)
It’s pretty straightforward. Dems depend on poor people, the disadvantaged, and minorities to vote for them, and Republicans depend on making it as hard as possible for those people to vote.
If Republicans are trying to make voting hard, perhaps they’d try to you know, make it hard? on the contrary, Democrats have moved beyond making it easy to the point where they are almost badgering people to vote. Automatic registration people have to opt out of, mailing them ballots which could end up in the trash(and be picked up by others and used). I’m sure automatic voting will be next. Your vote goes to all the members of the party you registered with.
Oh, cracker, please!
Conversely. why do Democrats assume their voters are too lazy or incompetent to fill out a postcard?
It is NOT hard to register to vote in Texas. Once you’re registered, it’s absurdly easy to vote! You do NOT have to go to the polls on Election Day- you can vote at your local supermarket, 14 hours a day, for 3 weeks prior to Election Day!
There may be many good reasons that many Texans don’t vote, but “It’s too inconvenient” and “I couldn’t take time off from work” are not among them.
There’s no convenience issue. There is a Democratic turnout issue and the dirty little secret is that it’s not even a minorities issue. Republican minorities turn out just fine, that’s why Republicans always do better with minorities in lower turnout elections. Democrats just don’t appeal to the types of people who vote. And no amount of changing the system to try to make it even easier will work. Except for my idea of automatic voting. Or maybe smartphone voting.
How does the automatic-registration system handle license applicants who are not citizens?
hey I never said it was too hard to vote. I just wondered why something that made REGISTRATION easier would be voted against by every single Republican state representative. What is it about the Republican platform that dictates “Vote no on automatic registration initiatives”? Other than the obvious, of course.
While the principle of the thing is cool, especially in rural areas of America where people can live in incredibly remote places far away from any and all voting booth ; I’d be kinda skeeved about voting by mail myself.
I mean, it’s already pretty easy to rig a ballot box should one be inclined to (to say nothing about a voting machine), but snail mail ? The possibilities and opportunities for tampering are pretty HYUGE.
Looks like the Oregon DMV codes US Citizens.
I’m pretty sure that is how the thousands of military members and other US citizens living overseas vote.
It is, and I seem to recall there was a minor scandal about *that *back when W. Bush was elected ? Something about overseas ballots being discounted or counted twice or something along those lines ? My memory’s under constant attack by beer and I can’t be arsed to check right now :o
I bet that’s a database Trump would love to get his hands on.
I had a hard time registering in Texas. The first time I mailed off the card (I had a job that wouldn’t let me off to do it between 8:00 and 4:30 during the open hours of the clerks office) they lost it in the mail. You have to wait a number of weeks for their processing time to expire before you sent in another registration card to them. The second time I called after to see if I was registered yet. They told me it wouldn’t be processed until after the election and they kept asking me if I was registered as a Republican or not. I was not, I’m independent. I got the card after 2012.
You know the only job I ever had that would let me off to vote was working at the community college in McKinney. I could vote there one year because I actually lived in the precinct. The other years I lived about 30 miles away and would have had to vote in my local place on Tuesday.
Maybe I’m stupid or something but they wouldn’t let me vote absentee since I wasn’t going to be out of town. Where I was tou had to request a ballot and they could deny you (they did deny me.)
Maybe I should have fought harder but at some point the average Joe like me says “fuck it.” I wasn’t voting for Hall (when I lived in Colin County) or for Crieiton (spelling it wrong, when I lived in Montgomery County) because I knew both of those jackaroos personally and they were going to win anyway.
Sometimes reading Elections or Great Debates here I feel like an outsider here because I’m not really all that partisan on either side. It’s always F the Rs or F the Ds they are stupid assholes. At least that’s the way it seems.
Hell if I know. I assume they aren’t automatically registered. I had to prove I was a citizen and not from Canada or Mexico or something with my birth certificate and Texas driver’s license when I got my Oregon driver’s license.
I suppose that could be true. It seems likely to fail an audit if they ever checked though because my signature had to match what the DMV here had on file on my ballot. They made a big deal here telling me to make sure it matched.
If he is going to be president wouldn’t he have it already? I mean if it exists I would figure both sides check the list against the votes logged. Maybe I’m naive.
You mean, so that they could check up on who you voted for? That’s going to bother some people.
According to the Chronicle and Morning News, people did, in fact, wait for hours in Houston and Dallas for hours to vote - during those early voting times.