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A lot of people are worried that Colorado will be 2004's answer to Florida 2000 when it comes time to tally the ballots after the polls close on Nov. 2. The presidential election is expected to be close here, and we've got a real mess with voter registrations.
Some people who signed a voter registration form
somewhere have discovered that they're not really
registered. Paroled felons who aren't eligible to vote
until their sentences expire have registered. Some people
are registered in multiple precincts. The provisional
ballots
of the Centennial State could become as
infamous as the hanging chads
of the Sunshine
State.
Much of this mess resulted from good intentions. The idea was to make it easier for people to register to vote, and so registration moved from one place -- the county clerk's office -- to motor vehicle offices, shopping malls, wherever. Some people handling registrations were not responsible public employees; instead they were temp workers paid by how many registrations they could deliver.
All this effort to make registration simpler was a solution to a non-problem. Just how hard is it to drop by the county clerk's office and register to vote? I've done it several times, and only once did it take more than a few minutes.
That was the first time I registered, just after turning
21 in 1971 (the 18-year-old vote didn't come along until
later). The person in the Weld County Clerk's office asked
my occupation. I said college student,
and she said
I should register in Longmont, where my parents lived.
I protested that I had been born in Greeley, and had lived in or near it my whole life except for the summer of 1968 when I did live in Longmont with my parents. In 1971, I didn't live in Longmont or get its newspaper or otherwise follow its public matters. I was married with a household in Weld County and I wanted to vote there. After 20 or 30 minutes, some of it involving my promise to return with an attorney if I were denied the right to vote where I lived, I wore her down.
But after that, it was never a problem when I moved to a new county. Granted, I worked for small newspapers, and my job brought me to the courthouse regularly during business hours. That's not the case for most people, so it seemed reasonable for clerks to extend office hours for a fortnight or so before the registration deadline before a general election.
But once you get past that, with registration in many places, you're going to have trouble keeping it all straight. One problem in Colorado is that our long tradition of local control conflicts with the 2000 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that installed George W. Bush in the White House.
The court ruled, in essence, that voting procedures must be uniform throughout a state, or else it's a denial of due process. In Colorado, voting procedures have been the province of county clerks, and so of course they vary by counties.
County clerks are elected and accountable to local voters. They can be recalled if necessary. I have known many clerks, from both political parties, and without exception, they try to run honest elections. When I called around to county clerks after the 2000 election to ask their procedures on questionable ballots, they all said that they and the election judges try to determine the voter's intent, and if they can, the vote is counted.
No system is perfect, and doubtless there have been county clerks who have abused their office.
But when it comes to deciding where to put our trust, there's a secretary of state in Denver. There are judges in Washington. Or there's a local official whom we elect.
I'll go with the county clerk any day, and if people can't be bothered to go to the clerk's office to register -- well, how much political influence is proper for those people who refuse to make even a trifling effort to be citizens of a republic?
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