New Jersey’s voter-turnout rate is among the lowest in the country. During the 2014 midterm elections, 30.4 percent of the state’s eligible voters went to the polls. Last week, only 21 percent of voters came out — the worst showing for a general election in state history.
That’s a big reason state lawmakers in June passed the New Jersey Democracy Act — a bill that would make voting easier by, among other things, expanding early-voting opportunities, introducing online registration and, perhaps most significant, automatically registering eligible voters when they get a driver’s license, unless they decline.
Automatic registration, which has already passed this year in Oregon and California, could register many of the approximately 1.6 million eligible New Jerseyans who are not currently on the voter rolls.
It is hard to see how anyone could disagree with making it easier for more citizens to vote, but Gov. Chris Christie found a way. On Monday, Mr. Christie, whose 2013 re-election set a state record for the lowest turnout in a race for governor, vetoed the bill on the grounds that it would cost too much, that residents already have plenty of ways to register and that automatic registration would encourage that boogeyman of modern Republican politics — voter fraud.
Like other politicians who rely on this tired claim, Mr. Christie, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, has not presented any actual evidence of fraud. That’s because there isn’t any. To the contrary, electronic and online registration decrease opportunities for fraud by generating more accurate and updated voter lists.
There are costs to enacting some of these measures, but as other states have already found, they are more than offset by the long-term savings that follow.
New Jerseyans, who support the reform package by wide margins, may get a chance to approve it directly next year as a question that supporters are considering putting on the ballot.
In a statement on Monday, Mr. Christie mocked automatic registration as a “government knows best” approach that would somehow “inconvenience” citizens who might not want to be registered at all.
“I don’t think that people ought to be automatically registered to vote,” Mr. Christie said on his monthly radio show in June. “Is it really too much to ask to ask someone to fill out a form?”
Of course, anyone applying for a license is already doing that. One would think champions of small-government solutions like Mr. Christie would be thrilled at the idea of eliminating unnecessary paperwork and improving the accuracy of voter rolls at the same time.
But Mr. Christie, who previously vetoed another effort to expand early-voting opportunities in 2013, seems persuaded, as many other Republicans are, that the party’s odds are better when fewer Americans vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/opinion/gov-christie-doesnt-want-your-vote.html?ref=opinion
That’s a big reason state lawmakers in June passed the New Jersey Democracy Act — a bill that would make voting easier by, among other things, expanding early-voting opportunities, introducing online registration and, perhaps most significant, automatically registering eligible voters when they get a driver’s license, unless they decline.
Automatic registration, which has already passed this year in Oregon and California, could register many of the approximately 1.6 million eligible New Jerseyans who are not currently on the voter rolls.
It is hard to see how anyone could disagree with making it easier for more citizens to vote, but Gov. Chris Christie found a way. On Monday, Mr. Christie, whose 2013 re-election set a state record for the lowest turnout in a race for governor, vetoed the bill on the grounds that it would cost too much, that residents already have plenty of ways to register and that automatic registration would encourage that boogeyman of modern Republican politics — voter fraud.
Like other politicians who rely on this tired claim, Mr. Christie, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, has not presented any actual evidence of fraud. That’s because there isn’t any. To the contrary, electronic and online registration decrease opportunities for fraud by generating more accurate and updated voter lists.
There are costs to enacting some of these measures, but as other states have already found, they are more than offset by the long-term savings that follow.
New Jerseyans, who support the reform package by wide margins, may get a chance to approve it directly next year as a question that supporters are considering putting on the ballot.
In a statement on Monday, Mr. Christie mocked automatic registration as a “government knows best” approach that would somehow “inconvenience” citizens who might not want to be registered at all.
“I don’t think that people ought to be automatically registered to vote,” Mr. Christie said on his monthly radio show in June. “Is it really too much to ask to ask someone to fill out a form?”
Of course, anyone applying for a license is already doing that. One would think champions of small-government solutions like Mr. Christie would be thrilled at the idea of eliminating unnecessary paperwork and improving the accuracy of voter rolls at the same time.
But Mr. Christie, who previously vetoed another effort to expand early-voting opportunities in 2013, seems persuaded, as many other Republicans are, that the party’s odds are better when fewer Americans vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/opinion/gov-christie-doesnt-want-your-vote.html?ref=opinion
