Politics

Voter registration is way too complicated. But there’s a very simple solution.

Published

4 months ago

November 11, 2024

Voter registration is way too complicated. But there’s a very simple solution.

While looking for a late-night coffee, my wife and I recently found ourselves at a hip new D.C. restaurant. Even though it was late on a Monday night, the host informed us that to get a table we would need to have made a reservation a week earlier at precisely 10:30 a.m. Fortunately, we were able to snag a seat that opened up at the bar, and our date night continued without further complications.

Now, I’m not complaining. It’s a tiny bistro from an award-winning chef in one of the city’s hottest neighborhoods. Of course I’m going to have to do a little advance work to get in, and if I don’t, well, there are a lot of other places in the city to get a cup of coffee.

But as a country, we’ve been applying this same model to voting, and it’s a disaster. If you want to cast a ballot in November in Arizona — to name just one crucial swing state — you need to have registered to vote by Oct. 7. If you didn’t, you’ll have to wait until the next election. (Rules vary, so you may still be able to vote in other states, and you can always request a provisional ballot.)

We have come to accept this sorry state of affairs, but it doesn’t make any sense. You can be a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years of age, with no criminal record, and in many states you won’t be allowed to cast a ballot on Election Day because you didn’t file some paperwork anywhere from eight days to a month earlier.

You didn’t even need to register to vote for the first hundred years of the nation’s history.

But this isn’t a restaurant reservation; it’s your right. The Constitution doesn’t say anything about registering to vote ahead of time. As a matter of fact, you didn’t even need to register to vote for the first hundred years of the nation’s history; you just showed up at the polling place. Even today, you don’t need to register if you live in North Dakota, the only state that still doesn’t have a voter registration law.

So why do we do it? Voter registration got its start in the late 19th century in the Northeast, as cities became too large for poll workers to either recognize voters by face or handle the crush of people showing up on Election Day. But make no mistake, such laws were designed from the very start to suppress the vote, especially votes from the immigrants arriving on American shores at the time.

Consider just a few examples from Alexander Keyssar’s comprehensive history “The Right to Vote.” An 1866 law in New Jersey required all voters to register on the preceding Thursday — a day that blue-collar immigrant workers would be unable to take off. An 1885 law in Chicago required voters to register on one of two Tuesdays just before the election. And a 1908 law clearly targeting Jewish immigrants in New York City required would-be voters to register either on a Saturday or on Yom Kippur. Many of these laws did not apply to rural voters who were less likely to be recent immigrants.

In the South, strict voter registration laws became part and parcel of a massive effort to disenfranchise Black voters in the post-Reconstruction era that included poll taxes and literacy tests.

These efforts continue today. In Georgia, a new law that Republican activists are exploiting allows people to challenge the voter registrations of people they think might be ineligible. Since the law partially took effect in July, activists have challenged more than 63,000 voter registrations, mostly in majority-Democratic counties around Atlanta, according to a survey by The Associated Press.

For now, county officials are rejecting the vast majority of the challenges, but activists are pushing for them to throw out more registrations.

Advocates for these kinds of purges argue that they are needed to “clean up” the voter rolls of people who have moved away. But there are already processes in place to remove voters who have subsequently registered in other counties, and some states even compare records to help minimize duplicate registrations. Even if a voter remains on the rolls mistakenly, that’s only a problem if they cast a ballot, and there’s no evidence that’s happening in any kind of widespread way.

I understand the concern. But if you want to remove the people from the voter rolls who shouldn’t be there without removing people who should be there, then there’s a better way.

It’s the ultimate fail-safe for voters who forgot to register before an arbitrary deadline.

It’s called same-day voter registration, and it’s already the law in 23 states plus Washington, D.C. Under these laws, people who show up to vote on Election Day but aren’t on the voter rolls can register to vote right then and there. It’s the ultimate fail-safe for voters who forgot to register before an arbitrary deadline or were mistakenly removed from the voter rolls by an overly aggressive purge.

You might think of it as the democratic equivalent of getting a seat at the bar instead of at a table. You’re still in the restaurant, and you can still get something to eat and a cup of coffee — even if you didn’t plan ahead of time.

If, as Republicans are fond of saying, they want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat, supporting the expansion of same-day voter registration to all 50 states would make their arguments that aggressive voter roll purges are necessary a lot more convincing — and any purges a lot less damaging to legitimate voters.

Because you can always get a cup of coffee in another restaurant. But if you’re denied the right to vote on Election Day, there’s no second chance.

You can check your state’s voting laws online here.

Ryan Teague Beckwith

Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for BLN. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine, Bloomberg News and CQ Roll Call. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies.

Politics

‘Uniting anger’: Democrats fume over Schumer’s handling of funding fight

Published

6 hours ago

March 14, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

Chuck Schumer is facing one of the most perilous moments of his Senate leadership career.

The Senate minority leader came under heavy fire for the second straight day from Democrats enraged at him for backing a Republican bill to avoid a government shutdown, and fallout appears likely to last well past Friday’s vote.

A handful of House lawmakers, including some in battleground districts, are floating supporting a primary challenge against him. Activists are organizing efforts to punish him financially. Schumer is facing questions within his own caucus about whether he made strategic errors in handling the high-stakes moment and failed to outline a clear plan about how to deal with the complex politics of a shutdown, according to interviews with six lawmakers or their aides. Some Democratic senators are even privately questioning whether he should stay on as their leader.

“He’s done a great deal of damage to the party,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the liberal group Indivisible, which has scheduled an emergency call Saturday with its New York chapter and other local leaders to “seriously consider if the current [Democratic] leadership is equipped to handle the moment we’re in.”

In a remarkable sign of how deep the intraparty frustration with Schumer runs, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries refused to throw his fellow New Yorker a life raft. Asked by reporters on Friday if there should be new leadership in the Senate, he said, “Next question.”

Schumer’s one-time partner, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), went so far as to urge senators to vote against his position, saying that “this false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable.” And dozens of House Democrats sent a sharply worded letter to Schumer Friday, which expressed “strong opposition” to his standpoint, arguing that the “American people sent Democrats to Congress to fight against Republican dysfunction and chaos” and that the party should not be “capitulating to their obstruction.”

Though several senators said they supported his leadership, some Senate Democrats avoided questions when asked directly Friday about whether they continued to support him in the role.

“We still have more to play out on this,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). “So I’m not really thinking about the big-picture politics.”

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) also dodged, saying: “The leader I don’t have confidence in is Donald Trump.” And Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) responded to a query on whether he still supports Schumer by calling for a “good post-mortem” on Senate Democrats’ approach to the government funding fight.

“Anytime you have a failure — and this is a failure altogether — we as a caucus owe it to Democrats across the country and our constituents to look back and see: How do we get ourselves into this situation?” he said.

One Democratic senator granted anonymity to share private discussions said conversations are starting about whether Schumer should be their leader going forward.

“There’s a lot of concern about the failure to have a plan and execute on it,” the senator said. “It’s not like you couldn’t figure out that this is what was going to happen.”

The frustration toward Schumer reflects a boiling anger among Democrats over what they view as their party’s lack of a strategy for taking on Trump in his second term. Though few in Democratic circles think Schumer’s job as minority leader is at risk — and he isn’t up for reelection until 2028 — the frustration toward him spans the party’s spectrum, from moderates to progressives, both in and outside of Congress.

Schumer has defended his vote to keep the government running as the best of two bad choices aimed at not ceding Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk even more power to slash the government. Nine Democratic senators and an independent who caucuses with Democrats joined him to advance the bill, enough to prevent a government shutdown.

“A government shutdown gives Donald Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE almost complete power as to what to close down, because they can decide what is an essential service,” Schumer said in a BLN interview. “My job as leader is to lead the party, and if there’s going to be danger in the near future, to protect the party. And I’m proud I did it. I knew I did the right thing, and I knew there’d be some disagreements. That’s how it always is.”

He added that he is not concerned with his leadership position: “I have the overwhelming support of my caucus. And so many of the members thanked me and said, ‘You did what you thought was courageous, and we respect it.’”

But behind closed doors, even some longtime Schumer allies are raising the specter that his time has passed.

“Biden is gone. Pelosi is in the background. Schumer is the last one left from that older generation,” said one New York-based donor who is a longtime supporter of the leader. “I do worry that the older generation thinks 2024 was just about inflation, but no, the game has changed. It’s not left wing or moderate, it’s everyone now saying — the game is different now. But he was set up to battle in 2006, and we’re a long way from 2006.”

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said “active conversations” are taking place among liberal groups about how to make Schumer pay. He said Schumer will likely face protests over his support for the GOP bill at his tour stops next week for his new book “Antisemitism In America: A Warning.” But he said the effort to hold him “accountable” will not end there.

“He has to be made an example of to enforce Democratic backbone going forward,” he said.

And it’s far from just progressives.

“I have not seen such uniting anger across the party in a long, long time,” said Charlotte Clymer, a Democratic operative associated with the moderate wing of the party who launched a petition to boycott donations to Senate Democrats until they force Schumer out as minority leader. “Sen. Schumer has managed to unite us far more than Trump has in recent months.”

After the GOP bill advanced Friday, Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar said in a statement that “we need more leaders from the stand and fight wing of the Democratic Party.” MoveOn warned that the liberal group’s “members will be demanding answers from their elected officials” about the vote. The progressive organization Justice Democrats sent a text to supporters reading “F*ck Chuck Schumer.”

Also on Friday, dozens of protesters organized by the Sunrise Movement descended on Schumer’s office in the Hart Senate building holding signs that read: “Schumer: step up or step aside,” demanding he reverse course on supporting the bill. The group said 11 people were arrested.

“We have to reckon with the fact that young people, working-class people, people of color — the backbone of the Democratic Party — are moving away from the party,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, the organization’s political director. “Chuck Schumer is part of that reason.”

Still, some Democratic senators publicly stood by Schumer on Friday.

Asked if people are urging her to run for Schumer’s job, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said, “No, no,” adding, “I’m doing my job today.”

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who is retiring after this term, called Schumer “a good leader.” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) told reporters he still has confidence in Schumer in the top role.

Others acknowledged the difficult position Schumer found himself in as he attempted to steer his caucus through a lesser-of-two-evils situation without the same simple-majority cover that Jeffries had in the House.

“It’s tough to be the leader,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

With reporting by Emily Ngo and Hailey Fuchs.

Politics

Trump lauds Schumer’s ‘guts’ in backing bill to avoid shutdown

Published

11 hours ago

March 14, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump on Friday congratulated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for “doing the right thing” by backing the Republican-led bill to avert a government shutdown, a choice that’s put the New York Democrat at odds with many in his party. “A non pass would be a Country destroyer…
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