THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603020008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By DONALD S. BEYER JR.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
My grandmother, Clara Beyer, told the story of her Fairfax County neighbor and employee in the 1950s, Julia Shields, a black woman who wanted to vote but couldn't. Mrs. Shields told my grandmother that she could never get more than two poll-tax receipts on her property-tax bill, when she needed three to be able to vote.
Clara Beyer and Mrs. Shields visited the Fairfax Tax Department, where the clerk noted there must be a ``mistake'' - one my grandmother pointed out seemed to happen every third year. The clerk took Mrs. Shields' $2 and gave her the receipts she needed.
The two women went to register Julia to vote, and the assistant registrar required her to read different paragraphs from the Constitution. She did as she was asked and she qualified.
On the first election day that year, Julia Shields and Clara Beyer went together to the voting place. And when Mrs. Shields gave her name, the poll worker checked her book, looked up and told her she was not registered.
The power and beauty of our democracy today is that every citizen can exercise his or her right in the decisions of government. With the days of poll taxes and literacy tests behind us, Virginia at last is on the verge of implementing expanded voter registration.
Legislation adopted in this General Assembly session will bring Virginia in line with some 45 other states and the District that have implemented the ``motor-voter'' law - so called because citizens would be allowed to register at state agencies such as the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Efforts to expand voter registration have had a tortured past in Virginia, even though Virginians overwhelmingly supported its implementation in a 1994 referendum. Most states implemented the National Voter Registration Act in January 1995, but we have been held up by last year's gubernatorial veto of enabling legislation and by an unsuccessful federal-court challenge by the governor and attorney general.
Virginia faced a March 6 deadline to comply with the federal voting act, and emergency language added to the motor-voter bill will allow the state to implement this session's legislation immediately.
With the legal way cleared, we are poised for the final hurdle. Governor Allen backed off his initial insistence that all new voters show identification when they vote. As the legislation stands now, only voters registering by mail would be required to show identification the first time they vote, a provision that avoids the potentially chilling effect of adding any new impediment to voter participation.
Your editorial page was wise to point out that more extensive voter identification is not needed - in spite of the suggestions that increasing access to registration will somehow lead to more fraud. States now enjoying expanded voter registration in the past year have not found a problem with fraud, but instead have seen more than 11 million new voters - of all parties - join the rolls. By making it a little easier to register to vote, Virginia is expected to add about 1 million new voters - 1 million more people empowered to make decisions about their government.
At Virginia's State Capitol, we often talk of Thomas Jefferson as if he were in the next room. And the core of Jefferson's philosophy was his belief that the people should be able to decide. It may be up to those of us who serve the public to give people a reason to want to vote. But we start by giving Virginians the opportunity to vote - without resistance of any kind. MEMO: Mr. Beyer is lieutenant governor of Virginia.
by CNB