California officials ponder all-mail voting

[Tender Branson]

A good thing to do, but there needs to be a system like in Colorado - in which all registered voters get sent their ballots ahead of election day plus enough polling stations for people to drop off their ballots on election day plus enough election-day polling stations to ensure that people who only register on election day can vote too.

Otherwise, if they scrap election day polling stations, people would only be able to vote if they have registered before election day. Some people simply wait until election day and decide only then to vote. If there's a voter registration cut-off date a few weeks before election day, the can't vote.

[Tender Branson]

A good thing to do, but there needs to be a system like in Colorado - in which all registered voters get sent their ballots ahead of election day plus enough polling stations for people to drop off their ballots on election day plus enough election-day polling stations to ensure that people who only register on election day can vote too.

Otherwise, if they scrap election day polling stations, people would only be able to vote if they have registered before election day. Some people simply wait until election day and decide only then to vote. If there's a voter registration cut-off date a few weeks before election day, the can't vote.

California passed same-day registration in 2012 (though it hasn't taken effect yet) so it will probably be more like Colorado's system. It seems like Oregon and Washington are more likely to keep 100% vote-by-mail and implement automatic voter registration compared to bringing back polling stations with same-day registration.

Nice. Let's hope CA has a good (and mostly flawless) system in place once they introduce it.

Question about OR and WA: What would "automatic voter registration" mean in these states ? About 99% coverage or much less than that ? Getting to 100% is almost impossible, if you do not have a Central Population Register. Not even the England/Scotland etc. manage 100% coverage.

[Tender Branson]

A good thing to do, but there needs to be a system like in Colorado - in which all registered voters get sent their ballots ahead of election day plus enough polling stations for people to drop off their ballots on election day plus enough election-day polling stations to ensure that people who only register on election day can vote too.

Otherwise, if they scrap election day polling stations, people would only be able to vote if they have registered before election day. Some people simply wait until election day and decide only then to vote. If there's a voter registration cut-off date a few weeks before election day, the can't vote.

California passed same-day registration in 2012 (though it hasn't taken effect yet) so it will probably be more like Colorado's system. It seems like Oregon and Washington are more likely to keep 100% vote-by-mail and implement automatic voter registration compared to bringing back polling stations with same-day registration.

Nice. Let's hope CA has a good (and mostly flawless) system in place once they introduce it.

Question about OR and WA: What would "automatic voter registration" mean in these states ? About 99% coverage or much less than that ? Getting to 100% is almost impossible, if you do not have a Central Population Register. Not even the England/Scotland etc. manage 100% coverage.

I don't know about Washington (plus Republicans currently control the state senate there) but the Oregon Secretary of State has been pushing a bill to automatically register voters starting with the state DMV database/driver's licenses.

The bill would have an opt-out for people who don't want to be registered and, like you mention, we don't have a central population register nor does every resident have a driver's license so 95% was the highest coverage rate I remembering hearing mentioned when it was debated in 2013. We'll see if the 2015 proposal is any different.

Thanks.

Another question: Some states are debating to give illegal immigrants (or non-citizens) drivers licenses (or already have done so).

Does the new system make sure that no non-citizens are added to the voter list, considering that the automatic system uses driver license data ?

[Tender Branson]

Yeah, that was mentioned in 2013. Here's a good article on it: http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-20766-no_license_to_vote.html

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Good if they can screen for non-citizens in the driver license database and keep them off the voter lists. No worry then to implement it as soon as possible, but the GOP will likely continue to be a pain in the ass ...