LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Register voters and PFD together?

To the editor:

Do we really need more lazy, uninformed voters in Alaska? Mike Coons wrote a very good letter in the Frontiersman in the September 28 edition, and I would like to endorse his opinion and expand on it.

Ballot Proposition 1 on the November ballot seeks to link voter registration to filing for the PFD. It claims it is too difficult to register to vote. People seem to have the wherewithal to apply for the PFD, but not the ambition to register to vote. We already have “Motor-Voter” that asks you if you wish to register to vote when you obtain your driver’s license. Answering YES to this question is far too difficult for many people according to Prop 1 proponents. I think perhaps we should make it more difficult to register to vote, not easier.

I think you should want to vote and care about the issues and candidates, not vote by “default”. Mr. Coons letter points out that passing this proposition will actually lead to lower voter turnout expressed as a percentage of registered voters, since more voters will be registered. Alaska has a transient population and I have been told that a high percentage of residents rotate out of the state.

It is virtually impossible to purge the voter rolls, so these folks will remain registered to vote in Alaska even when they are registered voters in another state. This may lead to possible voter “fraud” --voting absentee in Alaska while voting in person in Texas, Wyoming, etc. Most likely it will just expand the rolls with uninformed people who are too lazy or just don’t care enough to register. I have lived in Alaska for 27 years, but I have only had to register once since I vote in every election.

As long as you vote, you remain eligible to vote. I understand that some active-duty military say they find it difficult, but when I was stationed in other states, overseas, or in combat areas, I never had trouble absentee-voting in my Home-of-Record.

There has been ongoing pressure in recent years to cheapen the value of American citizenship, and I view this as just another step in that direction.

The next step, as has been seen in several other states, is that voting itself is too difficult and we have to move to web-based or mail-in voting, as actually applying for an absentee ballot, or going to the polls is simply too much trouble. Maybe we should link RECEIVING the PFD to voting!

Perhaps PAYING EACH PERSON $1000 a year to vote would motivate folks to put down the remote and make sure they were registered so they could vote and get the payout? That may be the point of no return.

—Don Hepler

Meadow Lakes