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Georgia gives green light to racial targeting at polls

In a bold move this week, Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel (R) announced she was sending letters to 4,770 registered voters that they may have to cast "challenge" ballots that won't be counted on election day.

In a striking announcement, she also declared that regular citizens could address the "problem" of non-citizen voting by contesting the citizenship of fellow voters at the polls -- forcing them to also cast challenged ballots that won't be included in election day tallies.
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Even more worrisome is that Handel explicitly stated that any voter's citizenship can be contested by any other voter on election day, a policy which could be used to target the state's rapidly-growing Latino population and other racial groups. As the AJC reports:

Any voter can challenge another’s qualifications to cast a ballot by notifying a precinct poll manager, Handel said. That voter then would be given a challenge ballot and would have to go before the election board.

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We really, really need:
Universal Registration

The solution is to take the job of voter registration for federal elections out of the hands of third parties (and out of the hands of the counties and states) and give it to the federal government. The Constitution grants Congress wide authority over congressional elections. The next president should propose legislation to have the Census Bureau, when it conducts the 2010 census, also register all eligible voters who wish to be registered for future federal elections. High-school seniors could be signed up as well so that they would be registered to vote on their 18th birthday. When people submit change-of-address cards to the post office, election officials would also change their registration information.

This change would eliminate most voter registration fraud. Government employees would not have an incentive to pad registration lists with additional people in order to keep their jobs. The system would also eliminate the need for matches between state databases, a problem that has proved so troublesome because of the bad quality of the data. The federal government could assign each person a unique voter-identification number, which would remain the same regardless of where the voter moves. The unique ID would prevent people from voting in two jurisdictions, such as snowbirds who might be tempted to vote in Florida and New York. States would not have to use the system for their state and local elections, but most would choose to do so because of the cost savings.

Feds must modernize voter registration to end fraud

Blaming ACORN for our voter registration system is a classic failure of missing the forest for the trees. Amidst accusations of ACORN putting our democracy in jeopardy, few are asking why private groups are even in the business of voter registration drives. The answer is that the United States is one of the few democracies where the federal government doesn’t assume responsibility for establishing full and accurate voter rolls — and it just isn’t working.
[...] Nearly a third of eligible voters aren’t registered to vote and our turnout rates are among the lowest in the world. [...] The problem is our "opt-in," self-initiated voter registration system. Right now the onus is on citizens to update their information, ensure correct spelling and cancel old registrations when they move. [...]
Implementing a few common sense reforms would go a long way in solving our voter registration problems and lessen the necessity of groups seeking to register so many new voters every four years.
One example is seeking to register every citizen before they reach voting age by following the lead of Hawaii and Florida in allowing 16-year-olds to register to vote, with their names automatically added to the voter rolls when they reach 18. This change would ideally be twinned with systematic registration of young people in high schools and at driver’s license agencies and "voter’s ed" classes on the mechanics of participation in communities. Other sensible proposals include Election Day registration and moving to making voter registration permanent through automatic updates of registration with changes of address.
More broadly, it’s time for the government to take on the responsibility of establishing full and accurate voter rolls. This goal is not rocket science — it’s the international norm and the very best way to prevent voter registration fraud and our low rates of voter registration.