Politics
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 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.
WASILLA, Alaska — Three weeks out from Election Day, President Donald Trump took a helicopter to a plane to another helicopter to a motorcade to an ice hockey rink in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, traversing nearly 4,000 miles over more than eight hours to turn out his base here to help Republicans defend the Senate.
But Trump’s trek might not be enough to save Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s running in a tougher-than-expected race against Democrat Mary Peltola in a state where the president’s approval rating is underwater and independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.
Alaska strategists and voters who spoke to Blue Light News acknowledged that Sullivan faces a difficult path to reelection, despite Trump’s time investment and the outside money pouring in.
“Very conservative MAGA voters can’t vote for you harder,” said Scott Kendall, a veteran political strategist who worked on two of Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaigns and was chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. “Donald Trump’s support in this current climate is both a blessing and a curse.”
Even some Trump supporters at the Tuesday night rally admitted the outlook appeared bleak.
“I think Alaska’s turning blue,” said Matt Niessink, a 45-year-old general contractor from Wasilla. He said he had voted for Trump three times and planned to support Republicans this year.
What did he wish the president would do differently? “I wish he’d shut his mouth sometimes and not be such a pompous ass,” Niessink said.
The president was in Wasilla — population 10,556 — because the outlook is darkening for his party in a state he carried by 13 points just two years ago. In a midterm year defined by the cost of gas and groceries, the Last Frontier has been hit particularly hard, with the average price of diesel nearing $7 per gallon. In the Senate race, Peltola is flush with cash and leads Sullivan in most polls. MAGA Inc., the cash-rich Trump-aligned super PAC, is increasingly focusing on Alaska as one in a slate of states that can help Republicans hold the Senate.
Enter Trump, who has been spending the cycle’s crucial final weeks holding rallies in red states to juice support among his base, which tends to see depressed turnout in years when he’s not on the ballot.
“That was a lot of flying,” the president said at the top of his remarks. “In fact, they were thinking about canceling. They said, ‘Sir, you’re very busy, this is very tough.’” But, Trump continued, he refused to cancel for a state he won three times.
Echoing his comments at other red-state rallies, Trump asked the roaring crowd for “one big favor” — to “pretend that I’m on the ballot, because every time I’ve been on the ballot, we win.” He repeated his promise that Americans will receive $5,000 dividends if Republicans hold both chambers.
“What this is about is getting out the vote,” Sullivan told reporters before Trump’s speech. “A rising tide of enthusiasm lifts all the candidates.”
Unlike some other Republican candidates in tight races, Sullivan has shied away from distancing himself from the least popular aspects of Trump’s presidency.
Sullivan proclaimed on stage at the rally that “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.” And although a campaign aide released a statement condemning Trump’s move to import Russian diesel, Sullivan did not join four of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Murkowski, who called on Trump to reverse the decision.
Art Hackney, a veteran Republican strategist in Alaska, said that “most of the people who support” Sullivan “think that he should” break more with the president.
Hackney, who runs a pro-Sullivan super PAC called “We Stand with Dan,” attributed that choice to loyalty — but suggested the president’s demand of fealty, and treatment of frequent dissenter Murkowski, could also be part of Sullivan’s calculus.
“A lot of his longtime supporters and the people who are in the industries that would benefit from that wish he would be more blunt,” Hackney said. “But with what Murkowski has done, if Dan did something considered a disrespectful trigger or something, what do you think would happen? It could well have implications for things that affect Alaska’s economy.”
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Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.
Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.
One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.
Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”
Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.
Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.
The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”
As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.
“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.
Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.
“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.
In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.
NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”
Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.
The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.
“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”
Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
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