The Nation justice correspondent Elie Mystal said Monday on “Morning Joe” that when in power, Democrat lawmakers should change the law so “if you’re eligible to vote, you should be automatically registered to vote.”
Mystal said, “We could eliminate all voter registration laws. See, when Democrats get in charge, we try to protect voting rights. We don’t make voting easier. Now, I’m all for voter eligibility requirements. We might disagree about what those requirements should be, but you know, I’m going to say that, like, there should be an age limit to vote. I might say 16, you might say 18, but I’m not going to say 8, right? So we’re going to agree that there should be voter eligibility requirements.”
He continued, “But once you’re eligible, why do you have to pre-register? why why is that even a thing? It wasn’t a thing in this country at the founding. We didn’t have voter registration in 1787. We didn’t have voter registration in 1821. We only started having voter registration generally speaking, after the Civil War. Why do you think that is? It’s because a bunch of freed African slaves were migrating up north, and all of a sudden New York was like, we need some registration up in here, right? A bunch of immigrants from Europe, mainly Ireland and Italy, were coming to New York. People were like, oh, we need some registration in here. If you’re eligible to vote, you should be automatically registered to vote. That is how they do it everywhere else but us. Everywhere else but us either has automatic registration or some other form of forced registration for everybody, so that you don’t have this disconnect between eligible voters and registered voters.”
Mystal added, “That’s the first law in the book that we could change and see how that’s different than just saying we have to protect voting rights. No, we don’t have to protect voting rights. We have to expand voting rights so that the 90 million people that sat on the couch and sat out this last election between democracy and fascism, so that maybe they have a little bit of an easier time to get up off the couch and come participate in the democracy.”
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