Voting Obstacle Course

The Supreme Court backed up the Ohio secretary of state today, stopping a challenge from Ohio’s Republican Party trying to get some 200,000 voter registrations looked at again. This is, of course, not the first time that we’ve had an instance of voting problems in Ohio. It seems like this is going to be a year where voter fraud is a major post-election story, one way or another. Personally, I’d like to associate myself with Matt Yglesias’ thoughts on voter registration. It’s absurd that it’s so difficult to register to vote in the United States. I can’t think of a single legitimate reason why voting is so difficult – although, of course, I can think of several illegitimate ones. The more people who vote, the more they tend to vote Democratic. That is an obvious problem for the Republican Party.

There are many, many things in the United States that defy logic and exist simply because they’ve been around for so long. Our voting system is due for a major overhaul. After two presidential election cycles in a row where voter fraud (or, in this one, somewhat moronically, voter registration fraud), we really ought to do something about it. If you’re eighteen, you should be registered to vote, period. If we can put a man on the moon, we can create a national election system that isn’t a shambling disgrace.