Motor voter bill steering us wrong - legislation to allow voter registration when people obtain driver's licenses, welfare, unemployment, library cards, marriage licenses and other documents - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 15, 1993 | by Samuel Francis

Back when the people's democracy" of the Soviet Union still kicked and thrashed, its commissars loved to boast about the massive voter turnouts their phony elections always produced. It didn't matter that only one political party was allowed and anyone who didn't show up at the polls to cast his meaningless ballot was likely to spend retirement in Siberia. To the commissars, the nearly universal turnout was the pride of their political system.

The Soviet commissars are gone, but their souls go marching on. For the past couple of years, Democrats in Congress have sought to enact a law that they claim would vastly increase voter turnout in our own elections and thereby reinvigorate American democracy. As it happens, their so-called motor voter bill would also pretty much lock the Democrats into permanent political power, but that's a feature the commissars of Capitol Hill would prefer you didn't think about.

The motor voter bill passed the Congress last year but fell to a veto by President Bush. Even with the help of a few not-so-stalwart Republicans, the Democrats failed to override his veto. Now we have a new president but the same bill. It recently passed the House and will no doubt speedily pass the full Senate and arrive on President Clinton's desk. Clinton has vowed to sign it, so it almost certainly will become law.

The bill requires states to allow citizens to register to vote when they undertake such mundane functions as getting a driver's license. Hence its nickname. But that's not the only occasion when citizens will be able to hot rod into the voting booth. Voter-registration also is to be permitted when one signs up for welfare and unemployment benefits, as well as by mail, at schools and libraries and when getting a marriage or hunting license. About the only place one won't able to register will be the state penitentiary, but the Democrats probably will get around to that.

Opponents say easier registration will result in massive voter fraud because it won't be possible to check out where registrants live or even whether they're U.S. citizens. In fact, the minority report on the bill in the 102nd Congress cited a number of cases in which illegal aliens already had voted in Florida and California. In the latter state in 1982, some 45 percent of bilingual ballots in nine counties were cast by illegals.

In California also, aliens already have nearly bankrupted the state through welfare and other benefits that state or federal laws grant them. False identification papers among illegals are commonplace, and there's every reason to think they'll use their fake documents to get on the voting rolls to milk real citizens and taxpayers even more.

The reason the Democrats so strongly support the bill is quite simply that they are the party most willing to squeeze the taxpayer and therefore will be most favored by the new, low-income, low-education, low-skill voters whom the motor voter bill will initiate into the mysteries of democracy. When Republicans in the 102nd Congress tried to amend the bill to prevent voter registration at offices that hand out public benefits, the Democrats insisted on keeping that provision. They know that letting citizens (or noncitizens) register to vote at welfare agencies is almost tantamount to inducting them into the Democratic Party.

But even beyond the danger of outright fraud and the transparent power play of the Democrats with the electoral system, the whole concept of the bill is flawed. It assumes that the health of democracy is measured purely by the number of voters, not by the wisdom with which they cast their votes.

The League of Women Voters, which supports the bill, claims some 70 million citizens "are disenfranchised by an archaic voter registration system that discourages and discriminates." This is flapdoodle. No one is disenfranchised. Every citizen is perfectly free to register to vote if he or she desires, and registering once is a lot less difficult than dozens of other chores and duties that most people do every day.

The reason so many citizens don't register is that they don't care about politics, and if they don't care enough about who governs them even to register, it's a fair bet they don't know enough about public affairs to vote wisely or responsibly. Hence, the motor voter bill doesn't invigorate democracy; it cheapens it.

But the political bosses behind motor voting don't care about responsible citizens or responsible voting. They care about staying in office, and they know that lazy, uneducated and indifferent voters are even easier to gull than those who register and vote now. The Soviet commissars knew that, too, which is why they took such pride in the phony democracy they dominated and one reason they ruled it as long as they did.

Samuel Francis, a columnist for the Washington Times, is nationally syndicated.