Trumka Calls for Universal Voter Registration

[Teamster Jeff]

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The United States should adopt a universal and automatic voter registration system to boost participation and ensure all citizens have the opportunity to participate in the democratic process, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this morning.

Speaking to the Funders' Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP), Trumka said a strong and growing grassroots democracy movement needs to come together to “push back against the next wave of state-level attacks on the right to vote.”

In states across the country in recent years, Republican lawmakers have mounted major voter suppression efforts, including restrictions on voter registration; voter photo ID laws that disenfranchise young, minority and older voters; limits on early voting; indiscriminate purges of voter registration rolls and more.

Automatic voter registration, which is the norm for most of the world’s democracies, can be a major weapon to counter the attacks and “the corporate cash let loose by Citizens United.”

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[BlueCaliDem]

1. I completely agree.

and rec'd!

[iemitsu]

2. I was going to respond with, "I completely agree"

but I see someone has beat me to it.
This is a great idea and ought to be promoted now while the public anger over voter suppression is alive. The long lines to vote in Florida, new ID requirements for the next election cycle, statements about how voter suppression will win states for Romney, provisional ballots, and privately owned electronic voting and tabulating machines are still fresh in our minds.
We need a campaign to highlight these issues and point out the problems associated with them, then we need to push for a Federal law governing universal registration of eligible citizens and a uniform, publicly owned voting system that includes a verifiable paper trail of votes cast.
If this was initiated now, instead of later (closer to an up-coming election) it could be presented as a non-partisan issue and voters across the political spectrum would lend their support (after all there is a contingent of republicans who believe that Obama stole this last election).
If these issues are not addressed we will see more restrictive voting laws and less democratic participation.

[rhett o rick]

3. To be original, I totally agree. nm