Same day voter registration

Katrina vanden Heuvel - I have long advocated for a strong pro-democracy agenda to repair and strengthen our broken electoral system. The needs are many--from creating an Election Day holiday, to requiring voting machines that produce a voter-verified paper trail, to re-enfranchising former felons who have served their sentences, to public campaign financing.

Just this past week, when my 18 year old daughter was back from college for fall break and told me it was too complicated to go register this Tuesday, I realized why we need another important reform I've written about for these last few years--same day voter registration.

Last week, the Same Day Registration Act was introduced by Senator Russ Feingold (S.1986) and Congressman Keith Ellison (H.R. 3957) requiring states to provide for same day registration (SDR). With SDR, a citizen who misses a voter registration deadline can register at the polls on Election Day or the period leading up to it, and then cast a valid ballot. Read more.