A 'late registration' lament

Election Day always has its share of surprises, but in Montana perhaps the biggest one was just how long it took to find out who won and who lost.

This year, the delay wasn’t caused by mechanical errors or even human errors, it was caused by legislative error — namely the error of treating voting like it is a right instead of a privilege.

For 200 years our republic has thrived on the idea of shared responsibility for our government. Citizens would proudly march into polling places across this great country on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, join their neighbors in silent deliberation, and cast their votes thoughtfully and conscientiously.

Voting was a rite of passage, but not a right. It was something we did not dare take for granted because our soldiers had fought costly wars time after time to preserve our concept of self-government. We had defeated tyrants who denied their own people this same privilege. Thus, we knew that our freedom to vote was fragile, and must be cherished and honored.

But then someone somewhere decided that voting was a right — and because it was a right it should be easy. That led to early voting, which led to earlier voting, which led to mail-in ballots, which led to same-day registration, which led to provisional ballots, which led to a sense of entitlement among some voters that made them think they —  and their simple convenience — were more important than their fellow citizens.

Thus was invented the abomination known as same-day voter registration. This foolishness was created to make it easy for people to vote who had already shown they put the lowest possible value on voting by going to absolutely no effort to take part in this cherished institution.

On Tuesday, we saw the result of this nonsense when hundreds of unregistered Flathead County voters woke up and decided they had procrastinated long enough, but yet they still wanted to vote. And the state of Montana pampered these somnolent citizens and took every effort to assure them that their convenience was more important than any other consideration. The Legislature had said it must be so.

Thus, the tardy voters hindered the work of Election Department officials who were tending to the sundry needs of duly registered citizens who wanted help with the many problems that are encountered on even the most tidy Election Day.

But don’t expect the system to change. Failed secretary of state candidate Brad Johnson had proposed that voter registration should end on the Friday before Election Day, drawing a compromise between the desire to expand our voter rolls and the legitimate desire to avoid an Election Day catastrophe.

But thousands would complain loudly about “voter suppression” should the Legislature ever pass such a common sense measure. All they care about is making it easy to vote, and seem to have forgotten the value of the vote.

My goodness! Has our society gotten so corrupt that every citizen has to be treated like a spoiled child?

If someone can’t be bothered to register to vote before Election Day, they have already cast their vote — for sloth and indolence.  Let them live with the consequences.