In recent years, several States with predominantly Republican leadership have enacted voter registration changes. They claim this is to prevent voter fraud. My review of the evidence is that voter fraud is not a serious problem and that the laws are more likely motivated by wanting to create obstacles that impact Democratic-leaning groups more than Republican ones. The latest: making it harder for college students to register to vote.
In a related example, in 2004 the State of Ohio provided 2 polling booths for an entire college town, requiring students who wanted to vote to wait 8-10 hours. Long delays also happened in heavily African-American neighborhoods. Curiously, mistakes like this were not made in places with predominantly Republican voters.
Florida has restricted ex-cons from voting after they served their prison sentence. Changes to their rules prior to the 2008 election are being changed back to be more restrictive.
Trumped up charges of voter fraud and corruption were pushed by the Department of Justice under the Bush administration and Republican prosecutors that didn't pursue these weak cases were fired. See this timeline. Politics ain't beanbag, as the saying goes, but using the power of the state to whip up baseless criminal charges against your political opponents is creepy.
Bottom line: if you want to vote next year (and especially in 2012), don't wait until last minute to figure out how to register. It might be a small pain. Not making the effort rewards those who intentionally raise the cost of voting as a political tactic.
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