Encouraging voting is a worthwhile effort
Participation in our elections tends to run somewhere between dismal and disgraceful, but several Pennsylvania lawmakers are introducing legislation that holds promise for improving the situation.
Reps. Brian Sims, D-Philadelphia, Scott Conklin, D-Centre, and Tina Davis, D-Bucks, are offering a package of three bills. The first would allow in-person absentee ballot voting before primary and general elections, as well as absentee voting by mail with no questions asked.
Said Sims, “In 33 states and the District of Columbia, our fellow Americans now have some form of early voting. In 27 states and the District of Columbia, voters can request and cast absentee ballots without an excuse. It is time for Pennsylvania to allow and encourage these forms of legitimate voting in our elections.”
We agree. We also support the lawmakers’ proposal that would set up automatic voter registration of all eligible people who seek state driver’s licenses or identification cards. Those people would have a chance to opt out within three weeks.
The final bill in the package is a clearly needed attempt to reduce the ridiculous gerrymandering of legislative districts that now takes place by creating an Independent Redistricting Commission much like the one approved in Arizona and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
We have no bone to pick with Rep. Jim Christiana, but his 15th District provides a good example of the tortured geography that politically motivated legislative redistricting wrought in Pennsylvania. A map of Christiana’s district looks somewhat like an upside-down Vermont. It stretches from his home base in Beaver County to the westernmost and southernmost portions of Washington County. It would take the lawmaker about an hour and a half to drive from his home in Beaver to Burnsville in West Finley Township. That kind of configuration defies common sense, and the best interests of citizens.
“Voters choosing their representatives and not representatives choosing their voters is a core American principle,” said Davis. “Unfortunately, too often the outcome in a race in Pennsylvania is predetermined by how lines are drawn.”
As for increasing voter participation, we would like to add a few of our own ideas.
It may be tradition, and required under current statutes, but having elections on Tuesdays is, for lack of a better word, dumb. Many people are working for the bulk of the hours when the polls are open on those weekdays. Why not have primary and general elections on Saturdays, when many more people have free time? Better yet, make those election days holidays. Many people get a day off to honor Christopher Columbus, the guy who really didn’t discover America. Certainly our elections are more worthy of such a designation.
Consideration also should be given to same-day registration and voting, expansion of early voting options and even online voting.
The prospects for the lawmakers’ proposals winning sufficient support in the General Assembly are far from certain. One segment of our political class – known as Republicans – has a track record across the nation of trying to make it as difficult as possible for some people – primarily the poor and minorities – to cast ballots. They do so in the name of stamping out in-person voter fraud, which in reality is virtually non-existent. We need their voter ID laws about as much as we need a law banning housecats from operating heavy machinery, but that hasn’t dissuaded them from their program of misinformation and disenfranchisement. And these are the folks who control both houses of the state Legislature, so …
Put simply, when the options are discouraging involvement in our electoral process or encouraging more people to vote, our view is we always should make the choices that increase participation. We hope enough of our state lawmakers will put politics aside and pursue that course.