Congress Can Better Voter Registration

• By Marc Elias and Trevor Potter
• Special to Roll Call
• Sept. 14, 2009, Midnight

As Congress reconvenes, it faces a daunting portfolio of critical issues to attend to with 2009 drawing to a close. The headlines will be dominated by partisan maneuvering on the big-ticket items of health care, the financial system and energy. But Congress can and should in a bipartisan manner address another critical issue that is often overlooked outside of an election year: how to make our election system work for all eligible Americans. Right now it doesn’t, and the core culprit is the way that we register voters. Each year, our outdated voter registration system wastes hundreds of millions of dollars, frustrates eligible voters and leads to the involvement of third-party organizations in the process.