http://blog.champaigncountyclerk.com/2005/08/12/hb-715/ Champaign County Clerk Blog Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:54:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 http://blog.champaigncountyclerk.com/2005/08/12/hb-715/comment-page-1/#comment-51 Dan Johnson-Weinberger Thu, 25 Aug 2005 21:01:00 +0000 http://blog.champaigncountyclerk.com/2005/08/12/hb-715/#comment-51 Ouch! As the main advocate of this bill, this one stings a little bit Mark. I worked with Representative Chapa LaVia on this bill since 2003 and it helps to correct a significant problem: lots of people would like to vote but they do not register. I believe that the U.S. ought to implement universal registration -- meaning that every citizen is automatically registered to vote by the government, as most other Western democracies operate. Putting the burden of voter registration on the citizen, and not the government, clearly results in lower turnout. That's a problem. The marginal cost of putting an NVRA form on a university of community college website is zero. And the marginal cost of mailing an NVRA form with a university mailing is very close to zero (since there is unlikely to be any additional postage cost). Ultimately, same-day voter registration would be a great step towards solving the problem of people who would like to vote but missed a registration deadline. I hope we can get there. If you'd like to see a report we did ranking the websites of colleges and universities regarding how they do in providing information on voter registration, check out www.midwestdemocracy.org. And finally, I'll link to you from my blog. Ouch! As the main advocate of this bill, this one stings a little bit Mark. I worked with Representative Chapa LaVia on this bill since 2003 and it helps to correct a significant problem: lots of people would like to vote but they do not register. I believe that the U.S. ought to implement universal registration — meaning that every citizen is automatically registered to vote by the government, as most other Western democracies operate. Putting the burden of voter registration on the citizen, and not the government, clearly results in lower turnout. That’s a problem. The marginal cost of putting an NVRA form on a university of community college website is zero. And the marginal cost of mailing an NVRA form with a university mailing is very close to zero (since there is unlikely to be any additional postage cost). Ultimately, same-day voter registration would be a great step towards solving the problem of people who would like to vote but missed a registration deadline. I hope we can get there. If you’d like to see a report we did ranking the websites of colleges and universities regarding how they do in providing information on voter registration, check out http://www.midwestdemocracy.org. And finally, I’ll link to you from my blog.

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