If you are too stupid or lazy or apathetic to register to vote you do society a favor by staying home on election day.

Automatic Voting is next.

Disenfranchising eligible voters is the Republican party's second favorite thing (after lowering taxes for their wealthy buddies). If you take that away from them they'll be sad.

Yes... indeed, but lets not stop there! Let's add:

o default on the voting slate is automatically set for a democratic candidate, preferably far left
o rent control
o income equalization wherein we take all the income and divide it equally.
o free education paid for by business because they benefit from it
o free health insurance paid for by business because they can afford it
o full retirement paid for by others, preferably business because workers need this

That should do it in the short term, because individual are no longer responsible. The "Nanny State" must step in and protect everybody.

4: Democracy does not equal the "Nanny State". Claiming that this is a first step on a slippery slope towards a far-left agenda is just dumb. It only reveals your own apparent fear that if everyone could vote, they'd vote for these things.

5

Everyone can vote.
If anyone is disenfranchised it is only by their own apathy and indifference.

@ 5 ...in most places perhaps not, but in Seattle its quite a different story.

One only needs to look at the Sawant agenda if you are in any way confused.

We have no more business doing automatic voting registration than we do requiring employees to have an IRA which the City of Seattle will be trustee.... which was also put on the agenda by our city council.

Let the individual choose...they are all big boys and girls now.

@4: The problem with "democracy" is that sometimes people don't vote for what you want.

I'm against this idea. People have the right to chose not to vote and that includes having the choice to not register to vote. You may not like it but that's the other side of freedom.

@9 That is precisely the problem with democracy.....if left to their own devices the "people" would be little more than an emotional voting mob which would trample individual rights.

Fortunately we have a Senate and Judicial branch to mitigate these irrational impulses.

We used to have a President, but that seems to have gone horribly wrong this last term....a good example of "the will of the people" at work. .

Automatic voter registration is a no brainer. There is no valid argument against it as shown by the pathetic rightwing complaints about increasing voter turnout and democracy (what horror!).

I volunteered through my union once to work a voter-registration drive (at Folklife in 2008, you can thank me for Obama!). One of the more meaningful and illuminating experiences I've had.
Young people lead turbulent lives, many of them bounce from school to home to living temporarily outside the country to who-knows-where. Yet they still care as passionately about the direction this country is going as the rest of us.
But that uncertainty of where to register, how to register, when they can register, plus carving out the time to register from their frantic crammed schedules, really depresses voter turnout among under-30's.
We have a moral imperative to honor our professed democratic ideals by being as inclusive as possible in allowing interested citizens an opportunity to vote.

Judgmental (unless the judgement applies to THEM) pricks who want to make voting some kind of privilege based on righetous merit instead of a right accorded to legal US citizens. Shame on them for being un-American vote-suppressor republipricks.

@ 14 What's it to ya ? No, we're not kidding. Why is it any of your fucking business what people do online as long as it's legal ? What are you afraid of ? "those people" participating in YOUR government ?

I already thought this was a blue state. What are the Dems worried about?

"If all the energy currently expended on voter registration efforts could be spent in conversation with voters, more of your ideas and perspectives would be reflected in the laws that are passed and what gets funded in budgets". So basically projects like, oh say...
https://www.facebook.com/strangerseattle…