California lawmakers do their best to lower voter turnout

Everyone knows the old axiom about people who like sausage and public policy shouldn’t watch either being made.  It’s actually worse than that, at least for policy.  I suppose the final product of sausage-making looks appealing, but sometimes just looking at the outcome of policy deliberations can make one nauseated.

Take California’s new law, adopted from Assembly Bill 1461.  The stated goal of the bill is to do something about the incredibly low turnout rate in California elections.  Sounds good, right?  Unfortunately, the inevitable result of the bill’s passage will be to drive the turnout rate even lower.

Voter turnout in California has reached epic lows, with 2014 having one of the worst turnouts in history. As an aside, one of the consequences of such a low turnout is that the threshold for signatures collected in order to qualify initiatives for the ballot (which is based on a percentage of the voters in the previous election) is much lower, encouraging groups to try and get their proposals in front of what few voters turn out for the next election. This would probably drive turnout lower.

So what solutions do the sage and wise leaders in Sacramento come up with to get more people to vote?  Move Election Day from Tuesday to Saturday?  Mandate mail-in voting? Offer prizes for randomly selected voters?  No, the California legislators passed a bill that can only reduce turn out in future elections, AB 1461.

AB 1461 is the 1992 Motor-Voter act on steroids.  Motor-Voter was a federal law that required states to allow people to register to vote by filling out a post card at the DMV when they registered their car or got a driver’s license and then mailing it to the California Secretary of State.  AB 1461 now authorizes the DMV to send the information of everyone who applies for a driver’s license or state identification card to the Secretary of State; if the individual meets voting eligibility requirement, they are automatically registered to vote.

Proponents of the bill claim that the reason for low turnout in the present system is the barriers that keep people from registering to vote.  Right.  According to the Senate Committee on Transportation bill analysis, “every individual who applies for or renews a California driver’s license or identification card, or changes his or her address, receives a voter registration card.  The applicant can use the card to register to vote or to re-register after a change in name, address, or party preference. . . .When a voter moves to a new county, DMV instructs him or her to complete a new voter registration card; DMV accepts the completed card and forwards it to [the Secretary of State] or the county in which the voter resides.”

The barrier is that people have to fill out a post card and drop it in a mailbox; oh wait, they don’t even have to find a mailbox, they can turn it in to DMV.  It’s like living in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.  Imagine—people are being denied the right to vote because they actually have to make an effort to register!

But now all these people will automatically be registered!  Great!  But unfortunately the act of voting still requires them to fill out a ballot and mail it in to the proper office.  If people weren’t willing to do that to register, why would they do it to vote?  The net effect will be a huge increase in the number of registered voters, but a minuscule increase in the number of actual voters.

Anyone familiar with math will tell you that when you have a fraction, and you increase the denominator by a large amount but don’t increase the numerator, you get a smaller number.  The net effect of AB 1461 will be to drive turnout rates even lower. 

Then what?  I suppose voting activists will point to “barriers” to voting, like having to fill out a ballot and mail it in.  So why not eliminate this barrier and allow voters to vote on-line?  Everyone can just go to a website and vote for whoever they want for President.  Of course that means the next president of the United States will be Taylor Swift.  Or maybe Mark Zuckerberg.

If the desire is to increase voter turnout over the record lows in 2014, then look to innovative ideas like voting on weekends, encouraging mail balloting, or offering prizes.  Or here’s an idea—have candidates that aren’t huge buffoons financing their campaigns via wealthy idiots.  Oops, that last one isn’t going to happen anytime soon.  Sorry, didn’t mean to get your hopes up.