The New York State Senate's Election Committee is advancing significant legislation to reform the state’s election laws. A recent hearing on proposals to streamline voter registration hadn't run five minutes when a major new policy idea broke: New York State's top election official, Doug Kellner, said he is in favor of transforming the state's entire registration system so all eligible citizens are automatically registered to vote.
It is called universal registration and it would, in one fell swoop: boost the percentage of registered voters to 99.99%; knock down a significant barrier that keeps people from voting; and dispense the GOP’s phony claims of ACORN voter of voter registration fraud by eliminating the need for third parties from the registration process.
This isn't just chatter among liberal bloggers--this come from the Co-Chair of the State Board of Elections testifying before the State Senate committee, that can actually make it happen.
Until about a 150 years ago, the United States actually had universal registration, and most advanced democracies still do today. A determined effort to disenfranchise citizens who were minorities or poor couldn't be trusted to reliably vote 'the right way'. That resulted in New York and most other states adopting laws that knocked millions off the registration rolls and made individuals jump through unnecessary hoops to prove they should be allowed to vote. (Remember voter registration literacy tests and the poll tax?)
It's important to remember that the election reform bills being discussed in our State Legislature were never considered in previous years due to republican control of the State Senate. Same day registration, for example, requires amending the state Constitution - a process which entails approval by the Senate twice—once in this session and again in the next session as well.
The Co-Chair of the State Board of Elections cannot make this happen on his own. You can help got the process rolling. If you live in New York, please help by petition your senator by calling, facebooking, tweeting, emailing, or writing a letter to your senator. For the first time in many decades, real changes in New York’s election laws could happen before the next vital elections. You can use the NY Senate’s new website to assist you in petitioning your senator: http://www.nysenate.gov/... We can make this happen.
Here are some other videos on the same topic:
Watch Zoe Segal-Reichlin, from Election Protection, the nation's largest non-partisan voter protection coalition,
here http://www.youtube.com/...
here http://www.youtube.com/...
here http://www.youtube.com/...
and here http://www.youtube.com/...
Watch Senator Joe Addabbo, Chairman of the NY State Senate Committee on Elections here http://www.youtube.com/... and here http://www.youtube.com/...