Hillary's Automatic Voter Registration an Idea Whose Time has Come

     As expected she called for early voting 20 days before election day. She also offered some new ideas-namely automatic voter registration. It's the opposite of now where you have to register to vote-with her plan you have to basically 'register not to vote.'

    "As you may have heard, Hillary Clinton is already leaning into the ever-simmering battle over voting. Her Democratic allies are preparing to wage a national legal battle against GOP state-level voting restrictions, and she iscalling for a national 20-day early voting period. But now, Clinton is rolling out another proposal in her push for an expansion of voting access: In a speech in Texas that is underway right now, she is calling for universal, automatic voter registration."

    "Automatic voter registration for citizens has long been championed by voting reformers as a key part of modernizing our voting system. Clinton’s proposal would require the registration of all citizens in every state when they turn 18 years of age, unless they opt out. She is also endorsing the general goal of universal registration for those over 18, without endorsing a specific mechanism to accomplish this. According to the Brennan Center, there are various ways to add people to the voter rolls, such as when changes of address are filed. States can also implement required universal registration for people of all ages, as Oregon has done. Clinton cited Oregon as an example today."

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/04/hillary-leans-hard-into-the-battle-over-voting/

    As Sargent notes, this will lead to a conflict with the GOPers who have a fundamentally different philosophy of voter registration. Yes, they fear monger over phantom voter fraud-though they haven't shown it's anything like a remotely serious problem. 

    You've heard the saying If it's not broke don't fix it? The GOP sees things differently: they say, If it's not broke then you really need to fix it. 

    On the most fundamental level what this comes down to is that conservatives want it to be difficult to vote while liberals want it to be as accessible as possible. 

    "For another thing, as Hasen has noted elsewhere, the battle over voting access revolves around a much deeper dispute, in which some opponents of increased access have explicitly argued that making voting harder actually leads not only to less voter fraud but to more informed choices."

    “There are two ways of thinking about voting,” Hasen tells me. “The first, which is associated with conservatives, is that voting is about choosing the best candidate. If you take that view, you might want restrictions that winnow out uninterested or uneducated voters. Democrats and liberals are more likely to take the second view — that we should all have an easy way to vote and share in political power.”

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/04/hillary-leans-hard-into-the-battle-over-voting/

     What Sargent doesn't quite say is that-wholly coincidentally, I'm sure-the two parties respective electoral prospects correlate very well with their respective philosophies on voting: the GOP does well when fewer people vote, the Dems when more people vote. 

    In another words, the GOP does well if the minority wins. Certainly the minority is the only thing that will save Jeb Bush. 

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/does-jeb-bush-realize-goal-of-elections.html

   P.S. I like Sargent but he has a tendency to buy into silly narratives of the Very Serious Media-no doubt, as a member of the media himself, this probably isn't surprising. 

   He was peddling this silly narrative this morning that Hillary is in this terrible trouble for not accomidating the Beltway press. I wrote about this yesterday. 

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/no-paul-waldman-media-needs-to-treat.html

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/for-those-who-criticize-hillary-for-not.html

   Ok, that was actually about Paul Waldman-but he and Sargent share not just the Plum Line blog but seemingly a brain anyway. 

     This morning Sargent was telling us the sky is falling or Hillary-or at least her poll numbers. 

      "The political story-line of the moment is that Hillary Clinton’s numbers are sliding, and in truth, they probably are, particularly in comparison to where they were before she was a presidential candidate."

       "And yet, at the same time, new polling shows overwhelming support for the economic prescriptions she’s been talking about, as well as for the general story she’s been telling about the economy."

       "New Washington Post/ABC News polling finds Clinton losing ground on personal attributes and in the realm of preferred media narratives. Only 45 percent of Americans have a favorable view of her; only 41 percent say she is honest and trustworthy; 50 percent disapprove of her handling of the Clinton Foundation stories; and 55 percent disapprove of her handling of her emails. Majorities see the Clinton Foundation and her handling of Benghazi as legit fodder in the election."

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/04/morning-plum-the-hillary-disconnect/

    He himself says her numbers have fallen compared with the same numbers before she was a candidate? Uh-duh? I'm sorry but it just seems so obvious that any candidate's numbers will be lower than when they were nonpartisan public figures. 

    Considering that he numbers are considerably better even now than Jeb's and he still tells us he doesn't know if he's going to run yet or not-LOL-maybe he ought to be the one who's worried. 

     If you drink the same Koolaid  as Sargent here, then I guess the minority positions are going to win again. In reality this is just short turn noise and should be taken with a grain of salt. 

     P.S.S. For those who say she's not talking about issues, she has made a more serious proposal here than certainly anyone in the GOP caucus of candidates would ever dream of offering up.