Voting Is A Right, Not A Test

Every time we write about voting rights and giant purges of voter rolls in states like Georgia, and Ohio, and Wisconsin, we always get lots of responses along the lines of:

“Isn’t some simple pre-test of citizens’ ‘consciousness’ a means of improving democracy, rather than a means of undermining it?’’

(*actual quote)

But that’s not the way it works. Voting is not a test of how good a citizen you are, it’s a right every American of age has, or should have. In fact, you can’t be penalized for not voting. That’s the law. The Constitution guarantees the right to vote, but also does not make it mandatory.

It’s also the law for voter rolls to be updated. And of course they need to be updated because people die, and move. Yet many a County Clerk’s office or Board of Elections is notoriously inefficient at getting things up-to-date. That’s at least partly because in this day-and-age, people who die or move don’t tend to vote, especially with new photo ID requirements in many states where you have to prove you are who you say you are when you show up at the polls. Republicans in Kentucky, for instance, have just introduced new voter photo ID legislation which if passed would go into effect by this November, just…