Following is an excellent article by Stan Merriman. Read the entire article in the link to the Houston Chronicle below. Most importantly it is essential that attention is paid to the solutions. That these very obvious concepts have not been in place for decades speaks either to the ineptitude of the elected officials to the office or a concerted effort at voter suppression.
Stan Merriman was instrumental in leading the messaging team that researched what we expect to be the Harris Country Democratic Party identifying phrase: MAKING BETTER LIVES FOR ALL. Not Just the Privileged Few. Interesting enough we heard variations of this phrase used by the President and others around the party. His team must have been onto something.
Let’s simplify voter registration
By Stan Merriman Updated 08:59 p.m., Friday, February 10, 2012
An article in the Chronicle by Lise Olsen on Harris County’s voter registration system ("Voter rolls remain stagnant," Page A1, Jan. 30) highlights the contradiction we experience here as a dynamic and growing city with moribund voter registration and participation levels. The voter registration and participation rates are among the lowest in the nation, a situation which is viewed by some as a crisis in democracy.
The Harris County tax assessor-collector has re-created the equivalent of a regressive poll tax by maximizing the time and travel costs of voting. He forces most voters in Harris County to reapply over and over. He then decides whether to allow a citizen to remain on the registration rolls by a secretive purging operation that, even after the lawsuits by the Democratic Party mentioned in the Jan. 30 article, remains largely obscured from public scrutiny. No increase in the voter rolls for this dynamic and growing community is the result.
The Tax Office suspends or cancels voter registrations based on something like a credit check. The office calls it a live check; it sends personal identification information into a so-called "fusion center" and, from there, to where nobody will say. In any case, the unreliable information returned from various sources is used to disqualify or misdirect voters. This is not subject to audit and barely subject to appeal. You the voter just show up at the polls to discover when it is too late to do anything about it that you are not qualified to vote. Just making a simple change of address is difficult and risks cancellation. Voter registration in Harris County is really a lifetime reregistration process costing millions their right to vote and the county millions of dollars.
Many believe new voter identification rules will suppress turnout, but whatever effect they may have is dwarfed by the huge voter suppression caused by our registration process.
There are solutions.
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