Voters wait in line to cast their ballots in the New Hampshire primary. (AP Photo/David Goldman)Watching long lines of people standing in the snow to cast a ballot during the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary should remind us all that it’s long past time to make it easier to vote.
Why we still are talking about this some 225 years since the first presidential election speaks poorly of what we like to think of as the world’s finest democracy.
Instead, and especially in the South, we’ve pretty consistently tried to make it harder to vote – sometimes maliciously to discourage the votes of blacks and young people, and sometimes just dumbly by not adjusting to the 21st century.
Not only does our inaction cause real inconvenience, it also cheapens the leadership we so desperately need in America.
The United States is one of the few democracies that places the burden of registering to vote on individual citizens. Not coincidentally, the U.S. also has one of the lowest voter registration rates, according to a Jan. 28 report in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.