April 04, 2010 11:07 AM UTC

"I Don't Want Everybody to Vote"

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Denver Post reports on an old-as-dirt battle heating up once again in late session:

A sweeping election-reform bill that would allow voters to register until just before Election Day 2010 is likely to be filed as soon as next week.

If the bill became law, Colorado voters could register up to the Friday before the Nov. 2 general election this year. By 2012, Coloradans could register and vote on the same day, as the bill is currently written, Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Jack Arrowsmith said.

Advocates say allowing same- day registration will open the door to greater voter turnout, while Republicans see an attempt to bolster Democratic voter ranks ahead of an important election.

Myriad provisions include changes that would allow teens starting at 16 to pre-register to vote and would require even major elections to be done via mail-in ballot unless citizens opt for physical polling places.

A spokesman for Secretary of State Bernie Buescher, a Democrat, characterized the range of reforms as ideas under discussion, but Arrowsmith, a Republican, said clerks got their first glimpse of the 68-page bill draft Wednesday…

Common Cause, a group focused on campaign and transparency issues, has pushed since the early 1970s to allow Election Day registration. Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Colorado’s chapter, said the reform would open the ballot box to voters who’ve been underrepresented in the past.

“It’s not until we get closer to an actual election that traditionally disenfranchised voters take interest,” Flanagan said. “Election Day registration is the single reform that would most improve voter turnout.”

The move has Republican Rep. Frank McNulty, who oversees much of the GOP’s election strategy for the state House, crying foul over what he sees as a policy that could favor Democrats.

“The Democrats see this as their last, best opportunity to put in place mechanisms that give them an unfair advantage in the election process,” said McNulty, of Highlands Ranch. “They don’t know what will happen in November, but they have the votes in the House and Senate now.”

It’s not surprising that Frank McNulty would call same-day voter registration, or eventual same-day voter registration as described here, or for that matter any liberalization of voter registration laws an “unfair advantage”–you just don’t always see it characterized that way so openly. We’d say he protests a little too much on a couple of levels: for one thing, this bill hasn’t even officially dropped yet, and is sure to get debated and amended once it does. There are always legitimate considerations about security and practicability, which is why much more gets proposed about changes to the election system most years than actually becomes law.

But another way of looking at it is same-day voter registration doesn’t hurt any individual voter at all, in fact it only gives legally eligible voters more of an opportunity to participate. Where it gets all controversial and “political,” as McNulty’s reaction suggests, is the fact that last-minute voter registration, and simplified registration in general, is perceived to favor Democrats for various demographic reasons; that’s what conservative strategy icon Paul Weyrich was talking about (see title), declaring “our leverage in the elections goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Bottom line: you can argue about “political” motives for late voter registrations all you want to, but what McNulty calls “fairness” in this case is a little more complicated. And, dare we say, a point to score carefully: “I don’t want everybody to vote” is not a quote you’ll find chiseled in Yule Marble.