When he’s not busy slathering the White House in gold or recklessly sundering foreign alliances, President Trump loves to talk about voter fraud.
Although the incidence is rare — like, spotting-a-pangolin-in-the-wild rare — Trump persistently emits a gaseous cloud of false claims. About rigged voting machines, dead people casting ballots, mail-in votes being manipulated and other fevered figments of his overripe imagination.
Voting is the most elemental of democratic exercises, a virtuous act residing right up there alongside motherhood and apple pie. But Trump has treated it as a cudgel, something dark and sinister, fueling a partisan divide that has increasingly undermined faith in the accuracy and integrity of our elections.
One result is a batch of new laws making it harder to vote.
Since the 2020 presidential election — the most secure in American history, per the Trump administration’s own watchdogs — at least 30 states have enacted more than 100 restrictive laws, according to New York University’s Brennan Center and the Democracy Policy Lab at UC Berkeley, which keep a running tally.
Texas passed legislation allowing fewer polling places. Mississippi made it harder for people with disabilities to vote by mail. North Carolina shortened the window to return mail ballots.
In California, state Sen. Carl DeMaio and allies are working to qualify a November ballot measure that would require a government-issued ID to vote, a solution in desperate search of a problem.
“We have the lowest level of public trust and confidence in our elections that we have ever seen,” the San Diego Republican said in launching the effort, sounding the way someone would by lamenting the damage a fire has done while ignoring the arsonist spreading paint thinner all around.
Amid all the manufactured hysteria, there is a place that is unique in America, with no voter registration requirement whatsoever.
If you’re a U.S. citizen, 18 years or older and have lived in North Dakota for 30 days prior to election day, you’re eligible to vote. It’s been that way for more than 70 years, ever since voter registration was abolished in the state in 1951.
How’s it working?
Pretty darn well, according to those who’ve observed the system up close.
“It works excellent,” said Sandy McMerty, North Dakota’s deputy secretary of state.
“In general, I think most people are happy with this,” political scientist Mark Jendrysik agreed, “because it lowers the record-keeping burdens and saves money.”
Jendrysik, who teaches at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, said voter registration was abandoned at a time when the state — now redder than the side of a barn — had vigorous two-party competition and, with it, a bipartisan spirit of prairie populism.
“There was an idea we should make it easier to vote,” Jendrysik said. “We should open up things.”
What a concept.
Walk-up voting hasn’t made North Dakota a standout when it comes to casting ballots.