Voter Registration

Universal Registration

davidswanson — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:09:56 -0500

New Orleans -- With the election almost over (races in Minnesota and some other places still linger and runoffs await), it is safe to say the people are clear about some things and one of them is that they would prefer more democracy thank you, rather than less. States that actually made an effort to make the very act of voting less of a burden, like taking bad medicine, and encouraged early voting found citizens hopped happily into the lines, and the lines were less both then and later.

Ian Urbina of the New York Times quoted Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chair of the Federal Election Assistance Commission, calling for states to be required to “adopt” early voting. More significantly, she said, “The single most important thing that Congress can do right now is create universal voter registration, which would mean that all eligible voters are automatically registered….” Now, that’s what I’m talking about!

Now, I’m not going to quibble about whether or not such action would be the most important thing Congress could do or just in the top 5 or top 10. That’s not the point, but expanding the practice of democracy is exactly the point, and if we seized the time now to do so, then we can almost a better future at least for all of us who are more comfortable in believing that a fuller exercise of the franchise would actually compel policies that are more broadly based to benefit the total population rather than specific elites or special interests.

Urbina tracked down Professor Lorraine Minnite from Barnard who did not mince her words in pointing out the where the obstacles to getting this fixed really lie, placing the blame right at the Republican doorstep: “But the bigger reason that Republicans have resisted expanding the franchise is that the new people who are likely to come into the electorate are more often of lower income and are people of color, who tend to vote Democratic.” We need go get past this and live up to our ideals. Yes, universal suffrage and participation may make it possible for the Workers Party to win in Brazil, but it also didn’t stop a Bush-clone like Prime Minister Howard from running Australia virtually into the ground. You stand before the voters, and you take your chances. There are no sure things in politics, as we all know.

As I argued recently in these pages and in the op-ed piece for McClatchy-Tribune, for those who so strenuously object to third party registration efforts, both partisan and non-partisan, and the inevitable fact that there are always going to be some problems in any such enterprise, universal registration implemented either by the states or the feds, gets around that objection. For all of the pillorying of ACORN, someone has to step up and get the job done, and ACORN has tried to fill that space for decades long before all of this Republican generated controversy.

This is the opportunity to combine the left and right and get this job done and the problem fixed. It really does come down now to Congress and its members finally either stepping up or shutting up, because without real action, this is going to be a mess will be able to almost predict like clockwork every two years.

President-elect Obama knows how hard it is to register new voters and lower income and minority voters. He did that for Project Vote in Chicago before. He knows that there needs to be a solution here, and he spoke to exactly that fact during the election.

Congress needs to bring him that bill early.

2008 Election Proves Need for Automatic Voter Registration

Bob Fertik — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:51:51 -0400

As early voting gets underway, the need to make voter registration automatic is more important than ever.

John McCain and the Republicans are screaming about ACORN's voter registration efforts because a small percentage of the 1.3 million forms they submitted are invalid (and flagged as such by ACORN so they are not processed).

California just arrested a Republican operative who defrauded thousands of voters into re-registering as Republicans by signing petitions against child molesters.

Enthusiastic support for Barack Obama is sending new registrations through the roof and overwhelming county officials in California and across the country.

New requirements to match registration names against official databases (Social Security, motor vehicles, etc.) are producing millions of matching errors due to typos. (Even Joe the Plumber's last name is spelled wrong in his county voter file.)

So what is the solution? To eliminate the bureaucratic process of voter registration altogether and make registration automatic for all U.S. citizens over 18.

I first proposed using the Social Security database as the official voter registration database three years ago. Virtually 100% of U.S. adults have a Social Security number. If the Social Security Administration can't tell citizens from non-citizens, data from other agencies and consumer database companies can fill the gap. Social Security sends an annual financial statement to everyone each year; they could send it 3 months before each election indicating your official mail and voting address, and give people a chance to change that address in time for the upcoming election. One month before the election, Social Security could send every county a final list of eligible voters. People who move and don't receive the notice and don't find their name on the county list could vote with a provisional ballot listing their previous address for verification.

This system would eliminate registration fraud (submitting phony forms) because there would be no registration process. It would eliminate voter fraud (voting more than once) because each voter would appear on one and only one county's voter list. It would eliminate matching errors because there would only be one database, not multiple databases needing to be matched. It would save counties billions in computer systems and clerical staff. It would save courts millions in ridiculous lawsuits.

So why don't we Just Do It?

Let's Make Voter Registration Automatic for All Citizens

Bob Fertik — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:19:18 -0400

In 2000, Republicans stole the Florida election by disenfranchising as many Democratic voters as they could through various methods, most famously the phony felon purge of as many as 100,000 Democratic voters.

When Bush's appointees took over the Justice Department, they took their voter disenfranchisement strategies "national," most famously by pushing photo ID requirements through Republican-controlled state legislatures.

In April, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court ruled in favor of photo ID requirements, even though there was no evidence of voters registering under false identities. The Court ruled that any possible voter disenfranchisement was theoretical, and therefore not necessary for them to consider.

Only a few days later in the Indiana primary, the "theoretical" voter disenfranchisement proved all too real, as a dozen nuns over 80 years of age who had no drivers' licenses were prevented from voting.

But that hasn't stopped Republicans in other states from pushing even harder to disenfranchise voters. Missouri is leading the way by pushing for a state Constitutional Amendment requiring voters to provide documents to prove their U.S. citizenship. Robin Carnahan (D), Missouri's secretary of state, estimates that the measure could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship. As Steve Benen writes,

Proving U.S. citizenship is tougher, creating a hurdle that’s harder to clear. Missouri voters would likely have to produce an original birth certificate, naturalization papers, or a passport in order to participate in an election, and a whole lot of eligible voters would likely be denied a ballot or decide in advance it's not worth the trouble. Maybe five justices would sign off on this, maybe not, but it’s not obvious.

(These Republicans are apparently unaware that John McCain might not be eligible to vote in Missouri because he was born in Panana outside the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone.)

The response from Democrats and progressives, as on virtually all issues, has been mostly ineffectual and limited entirely to defense - even though the Republican efforts are nakedly partisan and un-American. As Digby writes,

This whittling away at the franchise will be one of the greatest accomplishments of the conservative movement when all is said and done. They simply don’t believe in the democratic concept of one person one vote. Never have.

So here's an "aggressive progressive" strategy: why don't we go on offense and make voter registration automatic for all U.S. citizens based on tax and benefit databases?

What possible objection could conservatives raise, as long as citizenship was accurately determined by official records?

The idea of automatic registration is entirely practical because most states have fairly complete databases of all state residents who are citizens.

43 states have an income tax, and therefore have a database of everyone who files a tax return, whether or not their income is high enough to pay taxes. (Low-income workers file tax returns to receive the Earned Income Tax Credit.) The poorest citizens qualify for benefits like food stamps, which are also stored in a state database.

As long as these files contain citizenship data, they would be perfect for automatically registering voters. (Non-citizens who live in the shadows are much less likely to be in state databases, so they would not be automatically registered under this proposal.)

I recently proposed this idea to some New York State activists and lawmakers. The idea is consistent with the New York State Constitution, Article II on Suffrage:

Section 1. Every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people and upon all questions submitted to the vote of the people provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age or over and shall have been a resident of this state, and of the county, city, or village for thirty days next preceding an election.

Since every citizen is entitled to vote under our state Constitution, why not register them automatically?

Several objections have been raised, but none of them seem fatal to the idea.

One objection is that the state Constitution requires voters to make "personal application":

Section 6. The legislature may provide by law for a system or systems of registration whereby upon personal application a voter may be registered and his or her registration continued so long as he or she shall remain qualified to vote from an address within the jurisdiction of the board with which such voter is registered.

However, Section 6 is optional - the legislature may create such a system, but the Constitution does not require it with a "shall." So a law creating a system of automatic registration would simply have to replace current laws that establish a system of "personal application."

Another objection is the method of determining citizenship and 30-day residency:

Section 5. Laws shall be made for ascertaining, by proper proofs, the citizens who shall be entitled to the right of suffrage hereby established, and for the registration of voters; which registration shall be completed at least ten days before each election. Such registration shall not be required for town and village elections except by express provision of law.

The current system relies on the voter registration form, which includes a sworn affidavit that the voter is both a citizen and a 30-day resident. The Board of Elections doesn't double-check, relying instead on the deterrent value of criminal charges against a registrant who lies. This deterrent is obviously strong enough that one rarely hears about ineligible voters voting illegally.

Here I need to do more research, but I suspect the records I would rely upon - tax and benefit records - include citizenship and residency information that is at least as reliable - if not more reliable - than the self-reported voter registration forms.

One final objection is that automatic registration would require voters to be assigned to "no party," since there is no way for a state computer to know which party a voter would like to join. This would require a second step of asking the new voter whether they would like to join one of the state's qualified parties (Democrats, Republicans, Conservative, Working Families, Right-to-Life, etc.). But rather than being an obstacle, this is an opportunity to provide new voters with useful information about the reason for joining a party - voting in primaries - which is otherwise missing from voter registration forms.

So if these are the main objections, I believe automatic voter registration is both consistent with the state Constitution, and an idea whose time has come.

Ohio Judge suspends voter-ID directive!

Frank Ranelli — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 08:23:56 -0400

First the bad news:

Matthew Damschroder, Franklin County elections director, estimated that as many as 5,000 of the 100,000 absentee ballots expected to be submitted have ID problems and would not be counted.

Now the good part:

Thousands of Ohioans got a reprieve from having their absentee votes thrown out when a federal judge last night halted state voter-identification requirements.

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting this morning that a Federal Judge suspended Ohio's new voter ID laws for early, absentee voters. It also appears that Blackwell, solidly behind Ted Strickland for governor of Ohio, doesn't want any more controversy swirling around him. Blackwell, for the time being, has declined to appeal the case.

Or as Judge Algenon L. Marbley, of U.S. District Court in Columbus put it:

"County boards are treating absentee voters differently," the judge said. "That’s a patent violation of the equal protection clause" of the U.S. Constitution.

At least someone still believes the Constitution is merely more than "quaint!"

Story developing....

Source:
http://www.dispatch.com/news/news.php?story=dispatch/2006/10/27/20061027...

Participate in LA's Election Day Rapid Response Team (Video the Vote)

matt — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 04:41:02 -0400

Participate in LA's Election Day Rapid Response Team (Video the Vote)

We are having a meeting Sunday Oct. 29 in Echo Park to discuss and train everyone on what exactly we will be doing on Election Day. We will have attorneys to guide us through what we will need to do. We will also be organizing film crews to follow the attorneys as they take testimony from voters all over the city. If you own a camera or are an attorney please come out to help us secure our elections! Finally, I want to invite any one planning to be a poll worker or poll watcher to come to the meeting. You must at least have our dispatch line number on election day so that we can respond to any incidents at your polling place. If you plan to participate in this action please save this link for I will update it as Election Day approaches.

Matthew
matt@cotam.org
213.481.2004

The meeting will be Sunday the 29th from 2-5.
1284 W. Sunset Los Angeles, CA
Just East of Elysian Park near Dodger Stadium.

Be sure to also register at http://www.videothevote.org

//////////////////////////////////////////////

Los Angeles County Poll Locator (Where do I vote?)
http://lavote.net/locator/

Los Angeles County (Am I registered?)
562.466.1323

Protect Your Vote!
All U.S. citizens have the right to vote and have the votes count, but human or computer error and unfair actions may stop you from voting. ProtectMyVote.org gives you the information you need to protect your right to vote. Our job is to help prepare you before you go to vote to prevent problems and help you if something goes wrong.
http://protectmyvote.rescueourdemocracy.org/

Are You Registered to Vote?
Check to be sure you have not been purged from the rolls. (Seriously!)
http://mydem.democrats.com/

Election Protection Strike Force
No registered voter should ever be turned away from the polls without being allowed to cast a vote. Yet this happened time and again in primary elections this year when electronic voting machines failed to operate in even their usual untrustworthy, nontransparent manner.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/14745

Demand Emergency Paper Ballots to Protect the Vote
Under the leadership of Brad Friedman of Brad Blog and Velvet Revolution, and with the support of over 50 Election Integrity Advocate groups, congressional members, elections officials, computer scientists, attorneys and journalists, an open letter was sent to all fifty states’ Governors, Secretaries of States, and State Election Directors requesting that emergency paper ballots be on hand in each precinct.
http://www.pdamerica.org/articles/alliances/2006-10-13-16-04-20-alliance...

Wake Up And Smell The Democratic Voter Purge

thepen — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 05:15:15 -0400

Tell The DNC To WAKE UP And Immediately Seek An Injunction To Reverse The Purge Of Democratic Voters

ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/pnum540.php

You had to know this was coming. The further they fall in the polls the more massive the voter fraud and preemptive vote suppression the other side will attempt. The key word here is "attempt". We're not supposed to let them get away with it without a fight. That fight must start NOW!

Reports are breaking that the pathologically partisan Ohio secretary of state has been secretly using the master database of voters to systematically purge hundreds of thousands of likely Democratic voters from the registered rolls. Their latest version of an old scam would be to put a discriminatory burden on voters in heavily Democratic precincts to meet a special hurdle of verification of their address, a guilty until proven innocent routine. And the allegation is that they have been doing this without any public notice that such a massive operation was underway, and timed in such a way that voters would have no recourse to re-register.

Never again will we allow such outrages against democracy to go unchallenged by the fullest force we can bring to bear. Bob Fitrakis, who has been fighting the election criminals in Ohio for years, has announced he will file a lawsuit no later than this coming Monday.

Please tell the DNC, and also the Ohio Democratic party (if you are an Ohio resident), to bring every resource to bear to join in this battle for the soul of our electoral process

ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/pnum540.php

Calling Baker's Bluff: A Proposal for Real Election Reform

Bob Fertik — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:07:14 -0400

On Monday, former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker unveiled their 87-point plan entitled Building Confidence in U.S. Elections.

While most of the plan is positive - such as banning partisan election supervisors like Florida's Katherine Harris and Ohio's Ken Blackwell - the proposal has one fatal flaw: requiring a photo ID for all voters.

The idea came from James Baker, who engineered the Stolen Election of 2000. It represents the paranoia of Republicans who believe ineligible voters routinely visit polling places to impersonate eligible (or dead) voters and to cast fraudulent votes. In reality, there are virtually no documented cases of such on-site voting fraud in modern times - and certainly no election outcomes that were changed.

Nowadays when fraud is committed by voters (as opposed to election officials like Harris and Blackwell), it is done with absentee ballots, which are not as carefully screened as in-precinct votes. A famous example was the 1997 Miami Mayor's race, which was overturned by a judge. A photo ID would not stop absentee fraud unless such ballots had to be notarized - an idea Baker did not propose.

Requiring a photo ID would erect yet one more barrier to the many existing barriers to voting, since 12% of Americans don't have a driver's license. Any "workaround" to offer an alternative ID to that 12% - nearly all of whom are poor, elderly, and/or infirm - is guaranteed to fail, even if it is free. The inevitable result will be "Katrina Democracy" in which people with cars (and therefore photo ID's) get to vote, while people without cars (and photo ID's) are "left behind" to drown in their powerlessness, just like the poor citizens of New Orleans.

A photo ID would also move America closer to a "national identity card," an idea long opposed by liberals and conservatives because it would increase the power of government to control its citizens.

Not surprisingly, Democrats led by Tom Daschle and John Conyers denounced the photo ID requirement as a "new poll tax" that would prevent millions of poor people from voting. They called it a partisan scheme to elect more Republicans and declared it "dead on arrival."

But what if there was a better way to reduce voter fraud that actually made it easier to vote, rather than harder?

I have outlined such a plan. And the election experts I have consulted are loving it.

The idea is simple: why not register every voter automatically, using their Social Security account (but not the Social Security number itself) as the official registration record?

Nowadays virtually every American has a Social Security account. Virtually every newborn gets one (to qualify for health coverage and/or a tax deduction) and every teen or adult must have one to work or to receive government benefits. You keep your account throughout your life, even if you need to change the original number because of identity theft or domestic abuse.

So why not use this authenticated and well-maintained national file as our national voter registration file? Obviously this file would be much "cleaner" than the thousands of county-created files that are poorly maintained and therefore full of relocated or deceased voters - which offers a golden opportunity for fraud.

My proposal is entirely consistent with the analysis that undergirds the Carter-Baker proposal. Like me, Carter and Baker think county election boards do an inadequate job of maintaining accurate voter files, and want to take the responsibility out of their hands. This is the beginning of the Executive Summary:

"First, we propose a universal voter registration system in which the states, not local jurisdictions, are responsible for the accuracy and quality of the voter lists."

Of course, "universal" doesn't really mean "universal" when 50 states and 5 territories are maintaining separate files. So immediately they have to kluge together a patchwork fix.

"Additionally, we propose that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) develop a mechanism to connect all states' list. These top-down and interoperable registration lists will, if implemented successfully, eliminate the vast majority of complaints currently leveled against the election system."

That's a pretty big "IF," especially since the Republican head of the EAC, DeForest Soaries, quit last April because the EAC lacked any staff or offices.

But if Carter and Baker say it's ok to switch from a "bottom-up" to a "top-down" system, why stop in the middle at the state level and patch together a kluge? Why not go straight to the top for the whole enchilada of the Social Security file?

Moreover, Carter and Baker support automatic registration, just as I do. Obviously the nearly 100% complete Social Security file is far superior for ensuring the voting rights of every American than the 12% incomplete, income-skewed driver's license file.

The proposal I offer is remarkably simple. Every year at election time, the Social Security Administration would create a national voter file by removing non-voters (children and non-citizens). This voter file would contain names and addresses, but not Social Security Numbers or other personal information. It would then split this voter file into county files, and make them available on a high-security web site for county election boards to download. The counties would then remove prisoners (and non-pardoned ex-prisoners) according to state law, divide their files into precinct files, and print out sign-in sheets with the names and addresses of everyone who is eligible to vote.

The benefits of this new system compared with the current system are obvious - and huge.

1. It would make voter registration automatic. You would never have to fill out a registration form to vote - which is a major obstacle to voting for many citizens.

2. County governments would not have to laboriously maintain complete voter files. Instead, they would simply download the Social Security file (name, address, and citizenship status) for their county right before each election, merge in signature samples (and party codes for restricted primaries), and print out sign-in sheets for each precinct. This would save county governments billions of dollars each year in staff, postage, printing, and storage space.

3. The number of errors in the system would be reduced to a tiny fraction of the current system, so there would be practically no need for provisional ballots and all the hassles that go with them.

4. The tiny problem of voter fraud would be made even tinier. Duplicate registrations (which typically occur when someone moves and re-registers without cancelling the old registration) would become impossible, because a Social Security account has a single address. Dead voters would be removed as soon as Social Security is notified, which is pretty quick (because they have to stop the checks).

5. The Social Security file would get "cleaner" over time, if voters discovered the file had an out-of-date surname or address and provided a new one. (Such voters would cast a provisional ballot until the Social Security file was updated.) This would make life better for the Social Security Administration, as well as beneficiaries and Members of Congress who have to struggle with inaccurate files.

What are the disadvantages? None that I can find.

This plan could be implemented starting immediately and completed by the 2006 election (if it was a national priority) or otherwise by 2008.

1. The Social Security Administration would have to create a secure system to download county files to authorized county officials. (This could be done in 3 months if SSA has a decent computer system.)

2. County election boards would have to acquire the capability to download their county file and then match the street addresses against the precinct table so they can print sign-in sheets for each precinct. (Most counties have that capability already; if not, a specialized vendor could provide it easily.)

3. Counties would also have to scan and store all current voter signature samples, and add this image to the voter's record. (Many counties have that capability already; if not, a specialized vendor could also provide it easily.) This voter/signature file would have to be matched against the downloaded Social Security voter file. (As an alternative, the Social Security Administration could add signatures nationally from state driver's license files.)

4. In states that restrict primary voting to registered party members, counties would have to match their voter/party files against the downloaded Social Security voter file. (As an alternative, the Social Security Administration could permanently store the party code for each voter, subject to strict privacy rules. But some voters would never "trust" SSA with this information, so this approach should be set aside until this legitimate concern is resolved, if it ever is.)

So that's my simple plan. Jimmy Carter and James Baker, are you listening?

Make Voter Registration AUTOMATIC with Social Security Numbers

Bob Fertik — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:07:30 -0400

The Carter-Baker Commission Report entitled Building Confidence in U.S. Elections was published on 9/19/05. The most controversial proposal would require photo ID's for all voters, which Democrats denounced as a "poll tax."

The inevitable result of the photo ID requirement will be "Katrina Democracy" - people with cars (and therefore photo ID's) will get to vote, while people without cars (and photo ID's) will be "left behind" to suffer without political power and drown in their powerlessness, just like the poor citizens of New Orleans. For this reason, Rep. John Conyers declared it "dead on arrival."

"I am shocked that this Commission has decided to take us several giant steps back in the march for voting rights by recommending a national ID requirement for voters. This would inevitably disenfranchise minority voters and the most vulnerable among us -- those who live in poverty and the elderly. While I continue to believe that the 2004 elections showed our desperate need for election reforms, this misguided and highly controversial recommendation makes this Commission's entire report -- regardless of the merits of other recommendations -- dead on arrival from a civil rights and voting rights perspective. As a result, I am unalterably opposed to these discriminatory new requirements and will encourage my colleagues in the House and Senate to join with me in doing so.

Moreover, a photo ID requirement for voting would help create a de facto "National Identity Card," something liberals and conservatives have long opposed because it reverses the basis of our Constitution from "government by the consent of the people" to "people by the consent of the government." In other words, if you don't produce your "papers" you can be denied the ordinary rights of citizenship that we take for granted, like being able to walk down the street without being stopped and searched by a cop. (Conservatives used to be particularly vehement in their opposition to this and all other forms of "big government," but that all changed with Ronald Reagan and the New Right.) As Conyers declared:

A national voter ID card system would significantly diminish freedom and privacy in the US because once put in place, it is unlikely that such a system would be restricted to its original purpose. A national voter ID system would threaten the privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and will gradually increase the control that government and business wields over everyday citizens.

In reality, there is no significant need for any form of voter ID. It is already a felony to vote more than once, or to vote in someone else's name. Since the cost of getting caught (a felony conviction that will ruin your life) so greatly outweighs the benefit of doing it (casting one extra vote that has an infinitesimal chance of changing the outcome), no rational person would commit this crime.

When voter fraud occurs, it is practically never done in person at polling places. You must sign in, and your signature could betray you (unless you are an expert at handwriting fraud). Your face could betray you too, if the inspector knew the real voter's face. That is why it is almost impossible to find documented cases of in-person voter fraud - which is the only form of fraud that would theoretically be reduced by photo ID's.

In reality, most voter fraud is done through absentee ballots, where someone can slowly copy a signature with minimal risk of getting caught. There are many cases of absentee fraud, including the infamous 1997 Miami Mayor's race that was overturned by a judge. The photo ID requirement would do nothing to stop absentee fraud - unless such votes had to be notarized, which is tellingly not part of Baker's proposal. (Why is it perfectly ok to inconvenience poor Americans in a major way, but unacceptable to inconvenience more affluent Americans in the slightest?)

Still, Republicans have convinced themselves that in-person voting fraud is possible because voter registration files include non-existent, ineligible, and duplicate voters. When files are inaccurate, it creates a theoretical possibility that voters could vote more than once, or vote when they are not eligible. This principle applies even more to absentee voting than to in-person voting.

Either way (in-person or absentee), the solution to inaccurate files is creating accurate voter files - not imposing a voter ID requirement. So let me offer a much simpler solution that guarantees an accurate voter file and saves county governments billions of dollars!!

Let's use the Social Security file as the national voter registration file.

Everyone in America has a unique Social Security record (which is designated by a unique number, but is technically independent of the number that is initially assigned). Virtually every newborn gets one (to qualify for health coverage and/or a tax deduction) and every teen or adult must have one in order to work. You keep your account throughout your life, even if you need to change the original number because of identity theft or domestic abuse. So why don't we just make that record (without the Social Security number) the authoritative voter record of every citizen? (1)

This would have huge advantages over the current system:

1. It would make voter registration automatic. You would never have to fill out a registration form to vote - which is a major obstacle to voting for many citizens.

Are there any downsides? None that I can see.

1. Would Social Security Numbers be used and exposed to identity theft? Absolutely not because there's no need for the Social Security Administration to deliver any Social Security Numbers to the Boards of Election. They would only deliver unique, accurate voter lists with name, address, and possibly citizenship status. You would never be asked for your Social Security Number when you vote. All that matters is whether your name is on the sign-in sheet - just the way it works now. Your identity would be verified by matching your sign-in signature with your stored signature sample - just the way it works now.

2. Would non-citizens be able to vote if prohibited by state laws? No, because Social Security checks the citizenship of all applicants (2), and presumably stores that information in each record. (And presumably this information is more accurate than any information now stored by county election boards, which rely on voters' signed oaths that they are citizens, but have no resources to check birth certificates.) At election time, Social Security could download all records including the citizenship flag so counties could apply their state and local laws. (If sharing that detail violates immigration laws, Social Security could simply exclude non-citizens from the downloaded lists.)

3. Would felons be able to vote even if prohibited by state laws? This problem could be solved by having counties match the Social Security file against their felon file to remove felons before delivering voter files to each county. But this would have to be done according to strictly accurate matching procedures (possibly including Social Security numbers), not the deliberately inaccurate matches used by Florida in 2000. And there would have to be provisional ballot procedures if eligible voters were wrongly told they were ineligible to vote - just as there are now.

4. Could an ineligible voter cast a vote under someone else's name? Sure - just as they can now. But as I describe above, this almost never happens because it's a crime whose cost infinitely exceeds its benefit. If Republicans can prove that this happens frequently enough to come up with a "big government" bureaucratic solution, there are two obvious "small government" solutions that would solve 99.9% of all problems:

to prevent duplicate voting: dip voters' thumbs in purple ink, just as we celebrated in Iraq
to prevent impersonation: allow any common form of ID - student cards, Medicare/Medicaid cards, electric bills, etc.

This plan could be implemented starting immediately and completed by the 2006 election (if it was a national priority) or otherwise by 2008.

So that's my simple plan. Jimmy Carter and James Baker, are you listening?

Footnotes:

(1) The Social Security Administration only maintains primary address records for current Social Security recipients. (Social Security recipients can update their address at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/coa/) For everyone else, SSA gets your current address from the IRS every year to send your annual statement. (The IRS lets you change your address using Form 8822, but relies primarily on the Postal Service's automated NCOA system to maintain current addresses, which in turn relies on citizens to submit address changes to USPS via the web, by phone (800-ASK-USPS) or using a paper form at a Post Office.)

(2) There are millions of noncitizens in the U.S., and many have Social Security Numbers - but they are identified as noncitizens in the Social Security file and are ineligible to vote. In order to get a Social Security Number, noncitizens must submit a SS-5 form, which distinguishes U.S. Citizens, Legal Aliens Allowed to Work, Legal Aliens Not Allowed to Work, and Other. To prove citizenship (and thus be eligible to vote), an applicant must provide a U.S. consular report of birth, a U.S. passport, a Certificate of Citizenship, or a Certificate of Naturalization. These documents are verified by the Social Security Administration, so they are much more reliable than the records kept by county election boards, which rely primarily on the citizenship checkbox on the voter registration form.