Same-day voting

By The Standard Staff - 02/03/2007

After just one election in which Montana residents could both register and vote on Election Day, some are already pushing to abandon the option and others see it as a great success that just needs fine-tuning.

Nearly 4,000 people took advantage of their newfound ability to wait until the last minute. Long lines formed especially in the college towns, a strong indicator that many procrastinators were probably young people. Voting didn’t stop until around 9:30 p.m. in Missoula and continued to almost midnight in Bozeman. In Silver Bow County, 187 people registered and voted on Election Day. Missoula saw 632 new registrants; Yellowstone County, 456, and Gallatin County, 419.

House Bill 281, approved Thursday by House Republicans on a strict party-line vote, would push back the voter registration deadline to the Friday before an election. The bill enjoys strong support from the Secretary of State’s office and local election officials throughout the state, but if the party line holds, it faces defeat in the Senate, where Democrats enjoy a slim majority.

Butte-Silver Bow Clerk and Recorder Mary McMahon supports the bill. She thinks voters should be responsible enough to register ahead of time and said the new registration option was disruptive to everything else she and her staff have to get done on Election Day.

To McMahon, this is strictly about the integrity of the election process. “It should not be a partisan question; it should be a common-sense question,” she said.

Our initial reaction was to agree that a Friday deadline seemed more than reasonable. Have we really gotten so lax as a culture that it’s asking too much of citizens to register to vote a few days ahead of time? Shouldn’t we be teaching our young people to be responsible and plan ahead, rather than enable them to slack off until the last minute?

But the bottom line is that nearly 4,000 voted in November who wouldn’t have otherwise. And human nature being what it is, the registration deadline day will be busy no matter when it falls. If pushed back to Friday, election workers could easily end up toiling well past 5 p.m., only to face yet another long shift on Tuesday. Maybe it would be best to just staff up for the Tuesday rush and get it all over with in one day, especially if the end result is a much higher turnout.

Research on neighboring states was eye-opening as well. North Dakota doesn’t even have voter registration, and Idaho has offered same-day voting since 1994. In Boise’s Ada County alone, 21,000 voters exercised the same-day option in November, representing about 17 percent of votes cast in that county. Ada County election specialist Phil McGrane said they are always looking for ways to reduce that number since it takes about five minutes to process each person, but a high last-minute registration turnout is expected and considered business as usual.

The same goes for Wyoming, which has offered election day registration in all primary elections since 1952 and added general elections in 1994. State election director Peggy Nighswonger said that in her 11 years, fraud has been rare and local election officials have adjusted well to the new process.

In Uinta County which includes Evanston, election administrator Lynne Fox said there were problems in the early years and some poll workers quit because they didn’t like the added responsibility of registering people on the spot, but in time, new workers were recruited who supported the same-day option.

“It does take a while,” Fox said, “but there are definitely some advantages.” In her last election, 390 of the 8,759 who voted in Uinta County were new registrants. Another 238 changed their addresses that day.

Given the experience of neighboring states and Montana’s relative inexperience, maybe we should give same-day voting another try before abandoning it.

But if the option survives, it should still be incumbent on parents, teachers, political leaders, and others dedicated to the success of democracy to encourage new voters to register early and do their homework on candidates and issues before heading to the polls. Procrastination is never a virtue; it’s just a reality.