How Big a Burden Is Registering to Vote? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post, by Janice Blevins, was originally published in the Elections & Voting section of Civitas's online edition.

    The left has been howling about how the new voter reform law will discriminate against minority and young voters. Being a politically active college student myself, I decided to find out how hard it is to register to vote.

    Dreading what I had come to believe was the horrible strain of registering, I decided to go ahead and register to vote in the county where my school is located. I went online to the State Board of Elections site and went to its voter registration page. On that page, I found the Board keeps the voter registration form readily available along with steps of how to submit it. Keep in mind, due to all the horror stories on the news I was expecting a 20-page document that made me detail every inch of my life. But that's not what I encountered. Instead, I found a one-page document that required the most minimal information: my name, my address, my birthday, my signature, and my driver's license number or last four digits of my Social Security number – and actually both numbers are optional.


    Upon further research, I also found that this very basic voter registration form was available in so many convenient places: all government buildings, my library, my political party headquarters, and (if you simply cannot leave your house) online, where I found it. I also discovered that the completed form can be delivered to the Board of Elections for your county in a number of ways as well. If you register at a government office, that agency is required to deliver it for you. Even libraries are required to send it to elections officials.

    If you're submitting it yourself, you can mail it. You can drop it off at the elections board. Even if you mistakenly drop it off at the elections board in the wrong county, that board will send it to the right one. For me the most convenient method was to print and mail mine.

    If you have been paying attention to the recent arguments of the Left against voter ID, you know one of their big talking points for college students like myself is the elimination of same-day registration. Opponents of voter reform claim this will lead to college students simply not being able to vote because they do not have the time to register. If you are a college student, however, you should know well in advance where you will be living before the fall elections come around, and if voting is something very important to you, you would take the time to register now, right? Well, according to the Left, no, you wouldn't, because you simply don't have the time and registering before the 25-day deadline is simply too strenuous and takes up too much time from your busy college schedule.

    So, as a young college student, what is my answer to the liberals who say I will be disenfranchised because of my supposed lack of ability to register? They are completely wrong. Registering is not only easy, it is convenient. If a college student does not take the minimal amount of time to register before the 25-day deadline before Election Day, my conclusion would be either the student is lazy, a serious procrastinator, or just down-right does not care.