Written by: Daniel Felix
Gov. Jerry Brown signs in bill to automatically register Californians to vote
Californian residents are in an uproar about a voter’s registration law that some argue will infringe on their right to privacy. Is making registered voters out of all Californians with a driver’s licence crossing the line?
“If people want to participate they will do it on their own,” said a member of Conservative Heritage Foundation, Hans von Spakovsky. “The law puts citizens in a tough position because they have [to] put forth action to remove themselves.”
Everything in our world is becoming automatic. Pay checks can be automatically credited to your account and mail that took long periods of time to get from one person to the next is sent instantly over an email. So why shouldn’t something as important as being a registered voter happen automatically as well? Others simply think it’s an infringement on their privacy.
“I feel that they should have permission to register you when you go renew or get a license because it kinda violates the right to privacy,” said Riverside City College student Sandra Avalos.
For others it’s simply a matter of wishing to stay away from voting and don’t want to make uneducated decisions.
“You would get people that don’t really care and would lead to people just voting for whoever they like best, which would be making a bad choice and that’s what I think that could lead to,” said Cole Cluff, student at RCC.
Our founding fathers fought to gain representation, yet in our time our state average voter registration is 42.2 percent.
“Only by a trial and error process will we truly see what will make more people vote, but at least this makes it easier to vote,” said Bridget Moore, Mayor Pro Tempore of Wildomar City Council.
The issue here is that voting is seen a hassle. Many of us take advantage of being an American. The sheer fact that we can blow off voting should make us want to educate ourselves on who we can vote for and to vote all together.
Whether you believe this law is an infringement on your privacy or you simply want to stay away from becoming an automatic voter, it all comes down to how lazy we as a people have become.
“Automatic Voter Registration could lead to increased voting,” said Moore. “Once when Wildomar residence were to vote on a parks assessment, several people had told me they wanted to vote yes, but only a small fraction were registered to vote.” Just one prime example that shows how much good this law will do.
The same people who want to complain about that automatic voter registration, are the ones who want to complain about the issues they could’ve had a say in if they would have simply voted.
“Millennials stand strong at 53.3 million” said Time magazine Journalist Nolan Feeney. As a millenial, I offer priceless insight about my generation. Here’s how 99 percent of us work, you want us to do something, fine. Set it up and we’ll come in and get it done, but if you want us to get it ready and do it all ourselves, more than likely we won’t.
We as citizens of America just need to remember that regardless of what we feel about this law, all it does is make life easier for us.
The government already knows our information so if they want to take what they already know and help us out, is it really an infringement on our right to privacy?
