Jackson on Democracy

Jackson makes an impassioned plea for universal voter registration as a panacea for greater democracy. What he would get is massive voter fraud. Without the safeguards that exist in the present system of voter registration the country would return to the days of Boss Tweed in New York and Big Bill Thompson in Chicago where names on tombstones were voted with regularity.

Back in 1950, dismayed with the voter turnout in the 1948 general election in which Harry Truman won California by a margin of less than 1 vote per precinct, I sought to become a deputy registrar and thus improve the odds for a Republican candidate to be elected President. I found that this involved attending a few hours of school on North Spring Street in Los Angeles. Inconvenient though it was for me as the proprietor of a one-man business, I attended and qualified to register potential voters. When I suggested to the then-county registrar of voters, Ben Hite, that a school for deputy registrars in remote corners of the county like Pomona might assure a bigger supply of applicants, he said that experience has shown that those who took the trouble to attend the school on North Spring Street made more dedicated deputies.

Anyone who can’t find the time to locate a deputy registrar at a shopping mall or even a neighborhood market isn’t really trying and probably wouldn’t become an active voter in an election; certainly not in the 80% proportion that Jackson claims. Unless non-voters in a general election were purged, there’d be a great deal more tombstone voting. So some living, potential voters would also be purged, but if they are so indifferent about this privilege as to fail to vote in a general election (not one of the many special issue elections), continuing them on the voter rolls would make little difference. No, what we need are motivated and informed voters, not mere masses of registered citizens.

NORMAN WILLIAMSON JR.

Claremont