Aug 12 2005
HB 715
The Governor signed HB 715 this week. This is one of a host of legislative items that passes each year that looks good in a press release but which will have little to no positive impact. Fortunately, there are no negative repercussions for the election process so I have no difficulty with its passage.
The bill requires that every public institution of higher learning (including junior colleges) must mail out a voter registration form whenever they mail out class registration materials. They also must provide this information whenever they conduct in person class registration, which is no longer done at the University of Illinois and which I suspect is disappearing all around the state. They also must post one on their website.
The goal here is certainly laudable, but I suspect that the benefits of this legislation will be substantially less than its cost. The genesis of the bill is the misguided notion that problems with voter turnout are the result of a lack of registration opportunities when the reality is that poor voter turnout is more a reflection of people’s dissatisfaction with the political system or their relative complacency about it.
Our office faces a constant challenge. Marginal gains in voter registration could be made by increasing the number of staff people dedicated solely to doing that. For example, if one staff person was hired full time just to conduct more voter registration events at grocery stores, malls, and other busy locations would the number of people registered increase? Perhaps by a small amount. But the marginal gains continue to diminish as the number of registration opportunities increase. And increased registrations do not necessarily result in more people voting. We try to strike a good balance here by having a community presence at various events, but to not overdo it to the point where our efforts are wasted and where costs don’t justify the benefits.
Our legislature faces this same problem when they mandate the participation of public institutions in registration efforts. Now that higher education is roped in, how about libraries? Perhaps the circuit clerk. Maybe a registration form should be sent out with every tax bill. There are few limits to the number of ways that we can put more voter registration forms into the hands of citizens. What seems to be limited are the number of legislators willing to make changes to our political system that foster a desire to participate.
I also want to take this opportunity to applaud the University of Illinois for their excellent efforts to assist us in registering students. We have provided them with tens of thousands of voter registration forms over the years. More importantly, they have allowed for the permanent presence of two voter registration kiosks in well traveled campus locations. They also send out e-mails notifying students of registration deadlines and pointing them to our website so that they can check their voter registration status on line. If there is another University in this country doing more to facilitate registration I haven’t heard of it.
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.