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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (91606)	10/23/2008 7:23:17 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541344

>>Those who don't register themselves are the poor and otherwise disenfranchised.<< Karen - That's just an assumption, but I would guess that hard data would bear it out, at least with respect to the voters ACORN registers, since that organization intentionally concentrates its efforts in low-income neighborhoods. Over the years, I've seen the League Of Women Voters at tables set up in front of grocery stores in middle class areas. Their goal, apparently, was simply to get more people to vote, and I doubt that most the people who registered at those tables were all poor or otherwise disenfranchised. The NRA has run voter registration drives, too. Any group that follows certain rules can go out and try to get more voters to register. Nobody's stopping them. I don't see the problem. - Allen

To: Lane3 who wrote (91606)	10/23/2008 7:41:03 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541344

I'm glad the inverted commas around "logic" were clear... I even included some, but then went back and removed them as I thought I sounded patronising. It does seem an odd way to register voters to me. In the UK registration is pretty much automatic, annual surveys to every house and a central electoral roll. If you're homeless or transient you may miss out, I suppose, but you can register for a voting address so long as you have somewhere to collect post - I believe c/o social work offices, hostels and so on in extreme cases - and in the big scheme of things there are only tiny numbers so disenfranchised, and voting really isn't likely to be on their list of things to do anyway. But in the absence of such automatic registration voluntary services doing it (even perhaps with an ulterior motive behind them) seems worthy. And if the result so favours one side, maybe the other should sharpen up its act and see if it can't appeal to them... I guess I'm veering toward unreality now <g>