Columnist Susan Snyder: Voters’ concerns registered

Thursday, Oct. 21, 2004 | 8:12 a.m.

1.Political campaign tactics are not fair.

2. We are immersed in a campaign season.

Reread No. 1.

I weep for the Democrats who handed their voter registration forms to Republicans standing outside malls and grocery stores, and who now can't vote because it seems some of those forms were "lost."

I weep, because I reeeeeally wish they would have registered the old-fashioned way, at the Clark County office designed for that purpose.

So I called Larry Lomax, Clark County registrar of voters, and asked how and when it became possible for people to hawk voting cards on street corners the same way some groups sell cookies.

Basically, it happened in 1993, when Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act to make it easier for us to drag our lazy backsides to the polls.

The act established a mail-in registration program, Lomax said, and also allows anyone to take up to 50 forms and register others to vote.

The person taking the forms has to sign a document stating what they plan to do with the forms. But I'm thinking, "tearing them up and tossing them into the Dumpster" isn't among the promises they openly make.

The average American spends about four hours a day watching television and 42 hours a month surfing the Internet, according to America Online data. It seems only logical that making sure our voting rights are current every couple of years has become just too time-consuming.

"Theoretically, it does make it easier to get people to vote," Lomax said of the 1993 act.

It also makes it easier to make sure those views that conflict with yours don't get to vote, if you're inclined to bend the rules. It's not supposed to work that way, of course. But people aren't supposed to speed on the freeway or swipe grapes from the produce department, either.

Lomax says registrations lost in this system have been "an ongoing problem." Somehow, the fact that this mess has happened before but attracted less publicity is supposed to make us feel better.

Now, it makes some sense that people would trust others draped in red, white and blue performing what seems like a selfless civic duty by offering to register his or her fellow citizens to vote.

But it also is somewhat mystifying that for mere convenience we will hand over to a stranger on the street one of our most precious (and one of our few remaining) citizenship rights. At least one jilted voter actually gave his registration to someone identified as a member of the opposing political party.

The registration form suggests people check to make sure their registration was filed. It warns against trusting others to do it. And Lomax isn't sure what else he can do. He can't get people to register on time.

"We've got it on the Internet. We put it on billboards, on television and on the radio," he said.

Democracy's bedrock is personal responsibility. We abdicate any part of that, and we place ourselves at the mercy of others, including District Court judges and their human imperfections.

What happened to the voters whose registrations were lost is not fair.

Reread No. 1.