SPECTRUM: The Mother Hubbard of Ballot Measures

The PFD voter registration law on next week’s ballot is chasing after the 2.7% of Alaskans who have failed to register to vote on their own. Isn’t that silly?

Mother Hubbard government is going to be forced to pay for the negligible ignorance of its citizens, even when its cupboards are bare. It’s not a wise thing.

Ballot Measure 1 feels like a sensible initiative, but it’s not. As citizens, we shouldn’t be tasking our government to nanny those who are content to go about their own business and who refuse to register to vote. It is not a social ill we’re addressing.

Besides, it’s a tiny percentage. Likely, too, this small group of non-registrants will only add to the percentage of non-voters in each election, adding to our civic-righteous consternation.

This is not about democracy. We already have that. In a democracy, those who fail to vote nor register to vote, have already voted their conscience.

I think it is ironic that a libertarian got behind this, Scott Kahlhaas, for I always thought that libertarians don’t want the government in the nanny business and trust people to live out their conscience free from faux compulsion.

This is not about saving money, either. In fact, we’ll be spending more money on this system. Momma government on a tight allowance cannot afford this.

By passing Ballot Measure 1, we will be adding a rough million dollars to our State budget ($943K) just to get the system up and running. And then we’ll be racking up another $300K for annual operating expenses.

All this for the 14,423 estimated people (the 2.7% of us) who’ve – tisk tisk – failed to register. Some have said that we could save up to 70,000 people from non-voterdom by this measure, but that number is pure conjecture. And I’ll prove it.

How did I get 2.7%? I started with the number of currently registered voters in Alaska: 528,560. I subtracted them from the current estimated population of Alaska: 743, 812 to get 215,252 non-registered voters. From that number, we must subtract out those under 18 years of age.

Last year, about 27% of our population were under 18. At that percentage, we get 200,829 who are too young to register. Subtract that number from the non-registered voters and we get 14,423 who did not register themselves. Divide that by the total number of registered voters and we get a whopping 2.7%.

Before I go on. I think we should be proud of that number, because it is so low.

Now, take the $300,000 ongoing operating costs that you will approve if you pass ballot measure. Now split that cost up on 14,423 potential new voters. The cost to register each negligent Alaskan voter will come to $20.80.

I believe the legislature did their thinking on this PFD Voter Registration idea, despite its proponents saying they ignored it. The cost benefit analysis was overweight. It costs too much for too little.

By the way, the smidgen of potential benefit… that itself is not even real. What I mean is that those extra automatically registered voters may still not even vote. “You can fill a car with gas, but it won’t drive by itself.”

Passing this initiative might be a little like paying that $20.80 to a car driver, who by their own absentmindedness rolls to a stop miles from a gas station due to an empty tank. Would you be willing to pay for their unfortunate negligence? Maybe so. We’re a generous and compassionate people.

Well, would you be willing to give them that $20.80 in advance, not knowing which drivers will need it nor even use it? Raise your hand, so we can see them, for I didn’t see any hands go up on that?

Did yours still go up? OK. So, you still want to vote for this measure. Then think of it like this. You’re saying to that car driver, who you don’t know, who was absentminded, who may run out of gas on their next trip, and who would still have to walk or hitch to the gas station, “Here’s $20.80 just in case.”

The solution is as fickle as the problem. In the car driver case, you cannot predict which ones will need your help, so you can’t just give out the $20.80 in advance, can you? And if they do run out of gas, the money won’t come in handy anyway without them taking the trouble themselves to get to a gas station.

In the same way, neither can you predict if any of those automatic voter registrants will actually take the trouble to vote, though you may have paid in advance for them for that honored privilege.

Okay. Okay. You still think the automatic voter idea is a great, simple, citizen-friendly, and socially beneficial idea. And twenty bucks is a bargain. I get that. And in a perfect world, I would agree with you.

Then think with me of a possible solution to this expensive, lever-pulling idea. Could we not add a friendly addendum to this initiative, say, dock the person’s PFD the $20.80 to pay for their own registration? He’s signing up for free money at the time, anyway.

If the now “less-than-automatic” registrant agrees, then bravo, they have learned how to participate in government. If they refuse, thinking to themselves, “Heck no, I’m keeping my $20.80,” then bravo again, they’ve just learned that government won’t pay for what we as individuals are responsible. Now, that is a great lesson.

But I’m afraid we’re teaching the opposite with this measure.

Ballot Measure 1 comes with an expensive fiscal note. It would be more effective to offer free dinners to new voter-registrants and have government reimburse the restaurants later, then approve this measure’s fiscal note that comes with it.

If you wish to vote for this measure, then remember your own contradiction:

You have voted for the legislator who will get the State budget in order, and then voted against controls on the State budget, for this is an expensive and unnecessary ballot measure. It spends money we don’t have with no meaningful benefit. Poor Mother Hubbard.

Eugene Harnett is a business owner in Eagle River and an active community member since 1987.