Posted on: Friday, February 7, 2003

We can't do enough to make voting easy

It's always worth the effort to get more voters to the polls. And so we favor proposed legislation, backed by the League of Women Voters and the ACLU, that would let Islanders register at their polling places on election days.

Even Chief Election Officer Dwayne Yoshina favors same-day registration because he says, "it removes another barrier and impediment to registering and voting."

At is stands, voters must register at least 30 days before election day. Well, we contend that some of the most compelling information comes out during the last month of a campaign. It's around that time when people become engaged in an election and start to feel invested in the outcome. But if they haven't registered, then they're out of luck.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on this measure today. Let's seize this opportunity to turn around voter apathy in this state.