Why is Voting So Damn Hard?

When I was in junior high in Robstown’s only middle school &emdash; as they called them in a town that had five elementary schools but didn’t want too many Mexicans get beyond the 8th grade — we had student elections to pick our student council, class presidents and favorites. But you had to pay a nickel poll tax to vote.

In the ninth grade, in high school, the price rose to a quarter, which doesn’t seem much today but a cafeteria lunch at the time cost 35 cents and Levi’s jeans were $5.

My friend Guadalupe Youngblood and I floated a petition to abolish the student poll tax. I took it, with 85 percent of the school’s students’ signatures, to the principal and it got me a three-day suspension. Lupe was written up.

Since then, I have been wondering why we go out of our way to make it difficult to vote.

The poll tax, which used to be $1.75 when many South Texans and most agricultural workers were earning less than $25 a week, and service workers were earning less, was intentionally aimed at keeping them from the polls. And for decades, only property owners could vote on bond issues.

Clearly, that wasn’t the America we wanted.

But we still make it a chore to vote.

Why must one even register to cast a ballot? You can’t cash a check, get a credit card, apply for any social services or do much else without a state-issued drivers’ license or identification card. Why do we need a bureaucracy to register people to vote? Interestingly, after it became state law that one could register when getting or renewing a drivers’ license, the Texas Department of Public Safety wouldn’t send the applications to the counties.

What does that say?

Why don’t we simply register voters when they get their state ID? DPS knows who is here, where they live, what their immigration status is, and whether they are felons. Computers would produce a much cleaner file than what we now have. That information would determine who is eligible to vote.

And it would wipe out millions wasted on duplicate bureaucracy.

Then, let’s eliminate voting as we know it.

Is there a reason to have an early voting period, then a no-voting period, then an election day? Every polling place, early or election day, requires a judge and at least one clerk, paid at least minimum wage.

Why not just mail everyone a ballot with a stamped return envelope and establish a deadline? Wouldn’t that be cheaper, much more efficient and easier to tally?

Just a couple of thoughts I think would make ours a better representative democracy.

Photo by: Theresa Thompson