THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 5, 1995 TAG: 9510050023
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
At last, despite Gov. George F. Allen's best efforts to block it, Virginia will adopt so-called motor-voter registration.
Allen claimed in a lawsuit that the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to register voters at motor-vehicle and social-services offices and by Motor voters by mail, is an unconstitutional federal mandate.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Williams upheld the federal act and set a Virginia adoption deadline of March 6. Previously two federal circuit courts and three federal district courts in other states had supported the constitutionality of the motor-voter act.
Most states adopted the act Jan. 1. According to The New York Times, there have been more than 5 million registrations to vote in the nation since then, the greatest surge in registrations in the nation's history.
But Virginia and several other states with Republican governors rebelled. Generally, Republicans have resisted, while Democrats have supported, making voter registration easier, the assumption being that easier registration leads to more low-income voters, who tend to vote Democratic.< While failing to block motor-voter registration for good, Governor Allen did stall its adoption until after the Nov. 7 General Assembly elections, with Republicans having a good shot at becoming the majority party in both houses for the first time this century.
Tuesday's federal ruling left the governor the option of keeping the old voter-registration procedures for state elections, while adopting motor-voter registration only for federal elections. When federal and state elections coincided, separate ballots, separate registrars and separate voting machines would have been required, and voter confusion would have been likely.
It was thought the governor might adopt the dual-registration system to spite the federal government. He said Tuesday, however, ``I believe such a `dual' approach would be expensive, impractical and confusing to voters, and I will not recommend such an approach to the General Assembly.'' He's right.
State officials have estimated that 1.5 million voters could be added to state registration rolls in the first five years after the motor-voter act is adopted. The more voter registrations the better. by CNB