New Paper: Mandatory Voter Registration: How Universal Registration Threatens Electoral Integrity

The Heritage Foundation has this new policy paper which wrecks the arguements for mandatory voter registration. A portion:

Abstract

There is no question that the U.S. voter registration system could be improved. However, the answer to America’s voter registration problems is not federal mandates or federal interference in election administration. Indeed, the federal government has almost no experience administering elections; states administer elections in the laboratories of democracy. As a result of this exercise in federalism, states are implementing numerous improvements to the voter registration system—and they are doing it at less cost to our treasury, our Constitution, and the integrity of our elections than mandatory universal registration.

It has been said that for every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong. Washington soon may seek a complex solution—preemption of states’ responsibility; federal micromanagement of elections; eventual coercion of lackadaisical citizens—to the nonproblem of people choosing not to vote.

—George F. Will [1]

Mandatory voter registration (MVR), previously termed “universal” registration, could significantly damage the integrity of America’s voter registration system. The “voter registration modernization”[2] concept of automatically registering individuals through information contained in various existing government databases would throw the current system into chaos.

Specifically, voter registration modernization could result in the registration of large numbers of ineligible voters as well as multiple or duplicate registrations of the same individuals. When combined with the accompanying proposal that states allow any individuals who are not automatically registered to register and vote on Election Day, MVR presents a sure formula for registration and voter fraud that could damage the integrity of elections.

Automatically registering individuals to vote without their permission would also violate their basic right to choose whether they wish to participate in the U.S. political process. Indeed, this new scheme threatens one of American’s most cherished liberties: the freedom to be left alone by the government.

A “Solution” in Search of a Problem

Lack of registration is not the reason people do not vote. Ideological organizations such as FairVote and the Brennan Center for Justice are proposing that states automatically register all individuals to vote using existing government databases. Such proposals are based on the false premise that large numbers of Americans do not vote “for no other reason than they are not registered to vote.”[3] Yet after every federal election, the U.S. Census Bureau publishes reports on the levels of registration and voting, including surveys of individuals who do not vote, that disprove the claims that the major reason individuals do not vote is a lack of registration opportunities