Are voter registration drives immoral?

[SteveLaura 0]

No test for voting, but politics should be taught early in schools (if it isn't already).

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Sounds elitist.

[lucyrich 20]

There's at least one reason to vote even if you turn in a blank ballot.

Your local politicians have maps showing how many eligible voters are in each neighborhood, how many of them are registered, and what percentage of them actually turn out at the polls. When it comes time to figure out where the next big project goes, whether it's something desireable for the neighborhood or not (new street repaving project or new trash dump), you'd better believe they're sensitive to political backlash. Neighborhoods which have a high amount of voter participation get better services.

A similar phenomenon goes on with demographics. Part of the reason retirees have more political clout than young people is because retirees vote.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

There's at least one reason to vote even if you turn in a blank ballot.

Your local politicians have maps showing how many eligible voters are in each neighborhood, how many of them are registered, and what percentage of them actually turn out at the polls. When it comes time to figure out where the next big project goes, whether it's something desireable for the neighborhood or not (new street repaving project or new trash dump), you'd better believe they're sensitive to political backlash. Neighborhoods which have a high amount of voter participation get better services.

A similar phenomenon goes on with demographics. Part of the reason retirees have more political clout than young people is because retirees vote.

Good points.

[almaty 19]

Jim Crow laws... pretty sickening period of this democracy.

yes. also at one time had to be a property owner to vote

[Peikko 1,575]

Until they get the criteria right for voting 'intelligently' every reason for voting for a candidate is totally legitimate. Of course, if one wants to go down the route of a political elite, we are either looking communism or dictatorship. Which one would you like? You end up no better off? Who'd have thought it?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Can an argument be made that if a voter intends to vote, then that voter has a civic duty to self-educate on the issues of importance to him/her before casting the vote?

Obviously, the list of issues considered important and the set of outcomes considered desirable will differ in the electorate - thus the need for elections.

Edited October 7, 2008 by A.J.

[Peikko 1,575]

Not really - all these 'requirements' imply some kind of standard and that would be incredibly hard to impose and still remain impartial. The most you can hope for is to educate (oh boy, more reliance on education) as to why voting is important, what voting hopes to achieve and what the government is required to do for the electorate.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Jim Crow laws... pretty sickening period of this democracy.

yes. also at one time had to be a property owner to vote

That's kind of been happening now. In Michigan, some Republican who had access to a mortgage company was purging voters who had foreclosure notices sent to them.

[Peikko 1,575]

Are you sure? That sounds illegal to me. Has he been indicted?

[HAL 9000 96]

Jim Crow laws... pretty sickening period of this democracy.

yes. also at one time had to be a property owner to vote

That's kind of been happening now. In Michigan, some Republican who had access to a mortgage company was purging voters who had foreclosure notices sent to them.

Imagine that...

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Are you sure? That sounds illegal to me. Has he been indicted?

I'll see if I can find info on it. They were acting on their interpretation of the law which says you must reside at the address you registered to vote under. The voters need to update their address, however, if they are still living in their homes until being evicted, they reside there.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

ACLU Sues Michigan Over Voter Purge Program, Saying It Hurts College Students

Lawsuit alleges that voter-registration rules in this swing state could disenfranchise young people

By Liz Halloran

Posted September 18, 2008

The American Civil Liberties Union announced today that it has filed a federal lawsuit against Michigan electoral officials over what the organization characterizes as two "statewide voter purge programs" that it claims would "disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Michigan voters"—many of them college students—in advance of the fall presidential election.

The legal action comes two days after Democratic nominee Barack Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit against Michigan over another voter-exclusion practice—using home foreclosure lists to challenge a person's right to vote.

The lawsuits suggest that ballot battles in the key battleground state have just started to heat up.

The ACLU suit, which targets Michigan's Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, a Republican, as well as the state's elections director and the city of Ypsilanti's clerk, charges that two practices by the state are illegal: one in which the state immediately cancels the voter registrations for individuals who obtain a driver's license in another state, and one in which local clerks nullify new voter registration applications if mailed voter cards are returned by the post office as undeliverable.

"Students and young adults generally are much more transient than older adults, are much more likely to have driver's licenses from different states than their college, and are much more likely to live in multi-unit housing, such as dormitories and apartments," says Jonathan Doster, field organizer for the United States Student Association, a plaintiff in the ACLU complaint. "It's just not fair to deny someone the right to vote just because they are an out-of-state student or they don't get a piece of mail."

Michigan Republican Party chief Saul Anuzis has dismissed the Obama campaign's complaint as "a stunt."

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/nation...e-students.html

[rocks 494]

Are you sure? That sounds illegal to me. Has he been indicted?

I'll see if I can find info on it. They were acting on their interpretation of the law which says you must reside at the address you registered to vote under. The voters need to update their address, however, if they are still living in their homes until being evicted, they reside there.

wow, that's some nice support for the citizens of this country. it wouldn't surprise me at all that a republican would try to do that. brings back memories of when bush did that.

"One elections supervisor, Linda Howell of Madison County, was so upset by the errors that she refused to use the Harris/ChoicePoint list. How could she be so sure the new list identified innocent people as felons? Because her own name was on it, 'and I assure you, I am not a felon'."

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Are you sure? That sounds illegal to me. Has he been indicted?

I'll see if I can find info on it. They were acting on their interpretation of the law which says you must reside at the address you registered to vote under. The voters need to update their address, however, if they are still living in their homes until being evicted, they reside there.

wow, that's some nice support for the citizens of this country. it wouldn't surprise me at all that a republican would try to do that. brings back memories of when bush did that.

"One elections supervisor, Linda Howell of Madison County, was so upset by the errors that she refused to use the Harris/ChoicePoint list. How could she be so sure the new list identified innocent people as felons? Because her own name was on it, 'and I assure you, I am not a felon'."

It goes with the general premise from the original post, that the more people who register to vote, the more likely they will vote Democrat. The Republican Party knows this so they try different tactics to suppress voting.