THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 2, 1995 TAG: 9508020002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
A majority of Virginia voters made their preferences clear last November when they passed a constitutional amendment necessary to implement the national voter-registration act (motor voter) in Virginia.
In Virginia, the act would dramatically multiply registration opportunities for voters by making state offices like the DMV serve as registration sites.
Under motor voter, thousands of Virginia voters would no longer be annually purged from the rolls of registered voters simply because they failed to vote at least once every four years. Motor voter also requires all states to provide voters with the convenience of mail-in registration.
Governor Allen vetoed legislation implementing motor voter last May. What is worse, the governor has instructed our attorney general to pursue a federal lawsuit to block implementation in Virginia. These are not the acts of a governor deeply committed to the concept of ``rule of the people, by the people and for the people.'' The Department of Justice has sued the state of Virginia to force motor-voter implementation.
Governor Allen's main reason for overruling the electorate stressed ``the overriding need to protect the integrity of our electoral process.'' It is a little-known fact that Virginia registrars cannot require registration applicants to verify their identities. Yet the expanded voter-registration sites called for under motor voter, such as the DMV, routinely require verifiable personal identification. Far from being imperiled by the motor-voter act, the integrity of Virginia's electoral process would actually benefit from motor voter.
Something far more precious to Governor Allen than the ``integrity of the electoral process'' is at stake here. Half of the American people belong to what has been called ``the party of nonvoters.'' In Virginia, voting rates are below the national average. As voting studies consistently show, most nonvoters are low-income earners, young, propertyless, old and infirm or minorities. The specter that truly haunts Governor Allen is the very real prospect that motor voter will succeed in bringing hundreds of thousands of these voters to the polls as it has in other states.
It is no accident that all six Department of Justice motor-voter lawsuits have been provoked in states with Republican governors. Restrictive registration practices that depress voter turnout played an integral part in both the governor's 1993 election and his party's steady General Assembly gains.
Governor Allen's version of ``rule by consent of the governed'' includes a proven willingness to overrule the electorate if need be to preserve existing obstructions to voter participation. As a Virginia voter, I believe that Governor Allen richly deserves this DOJ suit. My only regret is that the majority of voters who endorsed motor voter in the first place cannot prevent the governor from using some of their taxes to pay for the defense of this insult to their voting rights.
WINNETT W. HAGENS
Virginia Beach, July 7, 1995 by CNB