TRENTON-Calling the decline in voter turnout a problem too serious to ignore, a new report from New Jersey Policy Perspective recommends Election Day registration, allowing people on parole and probation to vote and other reforms that would bring more people into the voting booth.

Let 'Em In and Get 'Em In: How to Give More People the Right -and the Reason- to Vote was written by Prof. Frank Askin, of the Rutgers-Newark Law School, who has long been active in efforts to expand voting rights.

"The question now," Askin says, "is how we expand both eligibility and turnout to make the process more credible and appealing to the public."

Jon Shure, president of NJPP, said, "Even if hardly anyone votes there is still a winner. But we're all losers because people in office aren't responsive to the needs of the many when they are sent there with the votes of the few."

The report points out that declines in voter participation are even more dramatic than turnout figures suggest. Not counted at all in turnout statistics are people who are old enough to vote but have not registered, as well as those who are old enough to vote but ineligible. "An analogy can be made to unemployment figures: they only count people who are actively looking for work, ignoring those who have simply given up."

NJPP released Professor Askin's report at a panel discussion held at Thomas Edison State College, where experts on the front lines in the fight for change gave their views on various aspects of voting rights. Scheduled as panelists were: Deborah Jacobs of ACLU-NJ; Lionel Leach of Voter Empowerment New Jersey; Miles Rapoport, president of Demos and former Connecticut Secretary of State; and Dan Cantor of the Working Families Party of New York. Symbolically the event was held on the last day New Jersey residents could register to vote in this year's election-calling attention to the problem with a law that closes the voting booth to people nearly a month before the election.

ELECTION DAY REGISTRATION

Seven states allow registration as late as Election Day itself: Maine, Minnesota, Idaho, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Wyoming and North Dakota. In those states voter participation averages 9.7 percent higher than in New Jersey. And studies have shown no evidence of fraud.

The report points out that a high number of citizens do not pay attention to electoral debate until the last two weeks of a campaign, too late to register to vote in New Jersey. It notes that the federal requirement that each state have a statewide computerized voter database (rather than the county-based lists in New Jersey) will make Election Day registration more feasible and even less subject to potential fraud.

FELON VOTING

In New Jersey, about 115,000 convicted felons are ineligible to vote. Fewer than 30,000 are actually incarcerated; the rest are on probation or parole. While New Jersey's laws are less restrictive than those in seven states that have what can amount to a lifetime disenfranchisement of ex-felons, the state should join those that are less discriminatory. Two states-Maine and Vermont-allow incarcerated felons to vote. Another 16 allow anyone to vote who has been released from prison. Four states allow those on probation, but not parole, to vote. Adding just New Jersey's 70,000 probationers and 15,000 parolees to vote would expand the potential state electorate by more than 1.5 percent.

And, the report notes, "The case for re-enfranchising ex-felons is made more compelling by widespread recognition that racial profiling and other discriminatory aspects of the criminal justice system make it so that felon disenfranchisement has a hugely disparate impact on the voting power of the state's minority communities."

THIRD PARTIES

New Jersey is the only state where an alternative party never achieved official political party status during the entire 20th century. Such status involves being allowed to compete for prominent ballot position, the opportunity to choose candidates in a state-funded primary and other "perks" that the two major parties take for granted. Most states have relatively low thresholds for attaining official status, like 5 percent of the vote in an election for governor. But New Jersey's requirement of 10 percent of the votes cast statewide in an Assembly election is unattainable.

"The time has clearly come to liberalize the definition of political party," the report says. "Providing a more level playing field on which alternative parties could compete would certainly broaden electoral discourse and give voters more options-even if just for registering a protest vote because neither major party candidate inspired them." The report also calls for allowing fusion politics, a system like that in New York, where candidates can run on the lines of more than one party. "This obviously enhances the stature of a minor party if it can demonstrate that the winner owes election to votes he or she received from the party's supporters and can help to encourage disaffected voters to get more involved in the system."

The report also discusses ways to expand voter choice, including instant runoff voting, weighted voting and creating more competitive legislative and congressional districts. While acknowledging that none of the proposals in the report would alone make a radical change in electoral politics or remedy all the problems caused by apathy and disaffection, they have the potential to bring in voters who today are part of the steady erosion in political participation. "Such a turnaround," the report says, "can only be good for democratic rule."

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© 2008 New Jersey Policy Perspective