RGIII.jpg

[Image courtesy of dailyrepublic]

Just over a year ago, the Washington Redskins drafted
quarterback sensation Robert Griffin III (or “RGIII” to his fans). In that year,
the star player has become a Washington-area sports and pop culture phenomenon
for his on-the-field
ability
and his off-the-field
character.
He has even become the subject of two
memes,
further fueling his ascension from football phenom to
pop culture icon.

But RGIII also did something this past year that even
non-superstars do – he
moved.

Moving is a fact of modern
life,
and a real
concern
for election administrators. Every election cycle, election officials face a
flood of voters who, after initially registering, move to a new address without
updating their registration. With few exceptions, voters may only vote if they
are registered at their current address, so these voters are in danger of being
turned away from the polls. Their right to vote depends on the flexibility of
their state’s law.

Under Virginia law, for instance, a complex set
of rules authorizes only some voters to vote with an out-dated
registration – depending on when and where the voter moved. If the voter
qualifies, he or she must still return to the polling place for his or her
previous address – which can be difficult for an Arlington voter previously
registered four
hours away at a college dorm at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

Florida law takes a different approach. Last
month, Florida enacted new legislation to
permit nearly all Florida voters to update
their address at their new polling place on Election Day, and vote a normal
(not provisional) ballot. The only requirement is that the voter’s new county
must use electronic pollbooks – i.e., expensive new
technology – to track address changes in real time, preventing unscrupulous
voters from fraudulently voting multiple times in multiple counties by
claiming, at each polling place, that they “just moved” to the area. While 63
of Florida’s 67 counties already use electronic poll books (as legislators
explained during debate, at 131:30), this approach would cause voters
problems in other
states,
which have not yet made this investment.

There are other proposals: for instance, the Brennan Center
for Justice advocates a modernized
system
of “portable” voter registration. The Brennan Center explains that states
already know where their voters live, thanks to non-election sources like motor
vehicle records, driver’s licenses, and tax returns. Additionally, projects
like the Electronic
Registration Information Center from the Pew Center on the States enable
states to securely share data to ensure greater registration list accuracy
across state lines. The Brennan Center argues that states, armed with all this
data, should update a voter’s registration automatically when the voter moves,
rather than requiring the voter to tell the government something it already
knows. But like many election policy proposals, not
everyone supports the idea.

Each approach has its merits and flaws, but each depends on
state legislatures for its enactment. In the absence of legislative action to
protect the
millions of voters who move each year, it falls to election administrators
to help ensure no voter is unnecessarily disenfranchised simply for moving.
Election officials must communciate
the message that voters need to update their registration
now, to avoid the consequences of failing to do so later. And if officials can
use an event like RGIII’s move to draw even more attention to this message,
they will have done their voters a real service.

Not to be confused with the television personality of
the same name, Steve Kolbert was an election administrator in Fairfax County,
Virginia during the 2012 presidential election cycle, and previously a student
in Doug Chapin’s “Election Administration and the Law” class at Georgetown Law.
He tweets about election law and policy at @Pronounce_the_T.

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