Registration: Testing Will to Vote

About 5 million eligible Californians cannot vote because they are not registered. Residents who have never registered or have moved, changed their name or party affiliation must register before an election.

MAURA E. MONTELLANO spoke with one voter about her attempt to register and with a spokesperson for the registrar-recorder’s office.

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SYLVIA TIDWELL

Artist, Los Angeles

Imoved from the Westside to downtown Los Angeles recently and thought that I had to re-register to vote. I didn’t anticipate it was going to be this incredible saga. On Oct. 5, I went to the post office. They were out of the forms. They directed me to another post office. On the way there, I passed a Ralph’s market to see if anyone doing petitions would have them; they didn’t. I then went to a Trader Joe’s and there was a petitioner, but he had run out of forms. So I went to the second post office. They had exhausted their supply of forms a week before and said I shouldn’t have waited until the last minute. I tried the Robertson Library where a reference librarian said they had been trying to get forms for more than a month, unsuccessfully.

The system has broken down somewhere; these forms are not available to people who want to do their civic duty. People simply cannot register. The very people who have the most to gain from voting are hampered.

The following day I phoned the Los Angeles County registrar’s office and was told that the forms were supposed to be available at all the places I had looked for them. They said that these places are supposed to call them when they run out of forms. I was told that I could have driven to their Norwalk office to get the form. I had a car and almost two hours to invest in this but what about potential voters who don’t?

When I think of the inefficiency, it doesn’t look good for voter registration for the county. When a post office says they haven’t had forms for more than a week and a library for more than a month, there is a problem.

Eventually I was told that I could vote at the polling district where I had moved from, but I am indignant for those who are trying to register for the first time and can’t. If people are frustrated in registering there is a suppression of enthusiasm and interest. The people who are least resourceful will be less likely to register and later, vote. The people who have the most to gain from voting are not going to be represented. It promotes voter apathy and perhaps cynicism.