The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Local News

January 10, 2012

Lawmakers look at same-day registration

By Mannix Porterfield Register-Herald Reporter

CHARLESTON — Same-day voter registration pulls more citizens to the polls, causes no major headaches or expenses, and is almost devoid of fraud, West Virginia lawmakers were told Monday by North Carolina election authorities.

While no bill actually was before Judiciary Subcommittee C, the issue likely will arise as the 2012 session kicks into gear at midweek.

“This was just informational,” explained a co-chair, Delegate Barbara Fleischauer, D-Monongalia.

“We wanted to have these speakers come today. We did not have a particular piece of legislation.”

Two North Carolina election officials praised the concept, along with Steven Carbo, senior director of the Democracy Program at the New York-based, nonpartisan, nonprofit group known as DEMOS, the Green word for democracy.

“I think that there is some hesitancy about the same-day voter registration,” Fleischauer said.

“This was an attempt to respond to questions by people who have actually dealt with it.”

Gary Zuckett, executive director of West Virginia-Citizen Action Group, said his organization has been a long-time supporter of allowing citizens to register and vote on the same day.

Zuckett planned to meet today with about 20 county clerks and the secretary of state to promote the idea.

Carbo told the committee that same-day registration is in force in nine states and the District of Columbia and has proved to increase Election Day turnout 10 to 12 points above the national average.

And with some minor bumps in the road, Carbo said the concept has proved effective.

“We no longer need to have early registration deadlines to have an orderly election,” he said.

Carbo provided a number of statistics to show that criticisms of the concept — that’s it is costly, burdensome and raises the prospects of fraud — simply don’t hold water.

“The experiences of same-day registration is otherwise,” he said.

Delegate John O’Neal, R-Raleigh, voiced concerns that voters waiting until the last day might find themselves in long lines waiting to register and might not get processed by the time polls close.

But Carbo said he has found that states with same-day registration deal with this by having a separate clerk and specific place within a precinct to get voters registered.

No problems surfaced once North Carolina adopted the concept, said Jason Perry, election director for Stokes County, N.C.

Perry prefaced his remarks by saluting the Mountaineer football team’s 70-33 shellacking of Clemson in the Orange Bowl and said that when he took over his duties, “I felt like a freshman quarterback in Dana Holgorsen’s system — I was just hanging on.”

Another North Carolina official — Sharon Lewis, deputy director of elections in Carteret County — likewise gave same-day voter registration high marks.

“We really never had any issues,” she said.

“To us, it really has not increased our expenses.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com

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