It's almost time for another election. In every state except North Dakota[1] you first have to register to vote before you can actually vote. Often you have to do so well in advance, and using an extremely inconvenient paper based process. This is one of the many contributing factors to our country's low voter participation rate, and I say it's time for it to go.
Imagine if you could just waltz in to any polling station in the country, facial recognition technology would verify who you are and you would be given the appropriate ballot based on where you live. There would be no need to register, or to do anything but fill out your ballot.
Here is why I think abolishing voter registration[2] is both feasible and desirable:
1. We have the technology
The entire purpose of registering to vote is to prove you are who you say you are. Since 9/11 our government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars building a police state that monitors every citizen's comings and goings, and permanently records almost all of our digital activity. Our government knows every intimate detail about all of us, and can instantly identify a person by their fingerprint, iris, or just by taking a picture of their face. If this technology is good enough to protect us in terms of national security, surely it is good enough to passively be used to confirm the identity of people as they go to vote. Why make people fill out registration forms and submit photo copies of their drivers license if we can just automate the process on demand?
2. Voting can be even more secure
Right now some states require you to show a photo ID when you vote - but all that happens is an elderly volunteer poll worker squints at the address on your license, and crosses off your name on the voter roll. Anyone could just create a fake ID, walk into a poll place, and cast a vote under someone else's name. Having a more robust system in place to 'trust but verify' our electoral process builds confidence in the outcome of elections and is an unmitigated good. The same machines and databases that could be used to eliminate the need for voter registration can also be used to document and record each voter as they walk into the polling station, thereby providing a verifiable 'paper trail' about each vote cast.
3. Encourages more people to vote
Lots of people, especially young people, don't even register to vote in the first place. Even for people who do register to vote, it is a hassle to maintain their registration status. Every time you move, or you are out of state during an election, or for some reason you get kicked off the voter roll - you have to re-register to vote before you go to the polls. As a result, in 2012 there were 90 million eligible adults who could have voted, but didn't[3] - mostly because they weren't registered. It's very difficult for a democracy to claim legitimacy when so few people actually participate in elections. By eliminating the need to register to vote, a huge barrier to casting a vote is removed, and as a result more people would vote.
4. Ensures your right to vote
Voting is our most fundamental right. It is with our votes that we elect people to write all of our society's rules. Right now the burden is on the citizen to proactively prove they are who they say they are before they are allowed to participate in the electoral process. I think this is exactly backwards. I think people should have the absolute right to vote, and it is up to the State to prove that they are not who they say they are. Eliminating the burdensome need to register to vote is one step in the larger struggle of universal and unequivocal suffrage.
1. North Dakota Secretary of State report PDF ↩
2. I also favor making voter registration easier as an interim step. It is possible to both want to improve voter registration and want to eliminate it all together. ↩
3. 221,925,820 eligible voters - 130,292,355 ballots cast = 91,633,465 people who could have voted, but did not. Source is 2012 General Election data from the United States Election Project↩