Jim Crow, Jim Croaked, and Jim Alien
A Non-Partisan Solution to a Bi-Partisan Argument About January 6th and The Steal
This post excerpts portions of the US Re-Constitution to propose legislation for Election Reform.
The only way to settle the controversies surrounding Election Reform is to create a National Voter Registry (NVR). It is the only tool that could simultaneously remove the three obstacles to bi-partisan election reforms: Jim Crow, Jim Croaked, and Jim Alien.
How The National Voter Registry Would Work
This National Voter Registry (NVR) would contain the current name and past aliases, current and prior addresses, date of birth, place of birth, and sex at birth of all living US Citizens 18 years and older. It would not contain any information regarding political party affiliation. That information would be held by local voter registrars in separate systems.
This NVR would be updated every day. When a voter moves and reports their address change to the Post Office, DMV or IRS, then these agencies would notify the NVR Agency so that the voter’s address would be automatically changed in their record. When someone is born, then their birth certificate would be reported by the local government to the NVR Agency, and they would be entered as a new record into the system so that 18 years later, they will be registered to vote automatically. When someone dies, then the local government would send the Death Certificate to the NVR Agency to remove that voter. That delivers the voter-roll clean up that Republicans are demanding to remove dead persons, and non-residents remaining on voter lists – the Jim Croaked problem.
The NVR Agency would interface with the Social Security Administration, the US Citizens and Immigration Services, and the State and Local agencies recording Birth and Death Certificates to ascertain age and US Citizenship. That delivers another Republican demand to ensure that only living US Citizens over the age of 18 are voting – the Jim Alien problem.
With a continuously-updated NVR, the NVR Agency could sort its voter files by precinct in every State. Then it delivers these sorted files to every Voter Registrar throughout the nation prior to the first Tuesday of November. This way every eligible voter is automatically registered to vote in the correct precinct for the upcoming Federal Election. Automatic voter registration delivers a huge demand for Democrats concerned about anti-fraud measures that suppress voter turnout – the Jim Crow problem.
Under the Constitution, State and Local Registrars are free to operate a parallel voter list for State and local elections. This should placate Republicans concerned about a Federal takeover of their State and local elections. Use of the NVR would only be mandatory for Federal Elections.
Several months prior to election day, the NVR Agency would reconcile its NVR with local lists of registered voters. Presumably, there will be more names on the local lists compared to the NVR, but those “additional” persons should be contacted by mail just in case the NVR missed an eligible voter. Regulations would be adopted to determine the steps the missed voters would have to take to fill in the records missed by the NVR Agency.
Supporting documents attached to each voter’s record should have a birth certificate, passport, SSN, and photograph. The voter sign-in list could have the voter’s month and date of birth and last four digits of their SSN so that the poll worker could ask the voter for that information in lieu of a photo identification. That should assuage Republican concerns about voter fraud and address Democrat concerns about requiring photo identification.
Partisan Compromises and Gains
The second part of Bi-Partisan Election Reform would implement a Saturday through Tuesday period for in-person voting, and funding poll-worker outreach to the sick and elderly who are unable to vote in person at a polling place. In exchange, Democrats agree to drop demands for Mail-In and Provisional Same Day ballots, and ballot harvesting. Republicans get what they want to protect against ballot fraud and Democrats get what they want for ease of voting for marginalized groups.
The weakness of Republican Election Reform proposals at the State level is that they rely upon the energy and initiative of the voter to bring all the documents to a government representative to authenticate age, Citizenship, and residence. Lower-income voters are less likely to store these documents at home, they are more likely to move, and they are more likely to vote Democrat. What was once considered to be an irreconcilable conflict between security and ballot access has now been resolved by the NVR. With the NVR, the voter doesn’t have to worry about whether they are registered in the correct precinct on Election Day.
Republicans can bask in the knowledge that deleting tens of thousands of dead, illegal, and non-residents’ names from voter registration lists, halting mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, and ending same-day registration will significantly reduce the opportunities for fraud.
Democrats claimed that Republicans’ demands were insincere and were not based upon any evidence of substantial fraud. If that is true, then these reforms would net far more additional voters for Democrats than Republicans. However, the most important benefit for Democrats is that the NVR creates the foundation for a uniform, credible, national majority vote for President that could provide the evidence to bolster the arguments to eventually replace the Electoral College.
If Mexico Can Do It, So Can the US
The NVR is not a trivial project. It would take several years to build and test, but Mexico has built its own Federal Registry of Voters in the wake of its fraud-plagued 1988 Presidential Election. There is no reason that the United States could not build its own to put an end to the most contentious and acrimonious partisan battle in recent memory. Had the NVR been operational in 2020, then the loser would have had no grounds for protesting the outcome. The NVR would be the best investment we could make in American Democracy to ensure peaceful and non-controversial transfers of power.