The goal of this post is not to get into the specifics of voter registration groups, ACORN, etc.  For whatever reason, the particulars around voter registration drives don't excite me.  But I still think having third party organizations registering voters is a bad idea... and the reason is simple.

Unlike a few countries in this world, the United States does not have mandatory voting.  The ability for a citizen to vote in an election is a right, not a privledge, but also not an obligation.  And while we can talk about the virtues all day long of having "easy access for voting", I'm not actually sure its good public policy to lower the bar for voting down to the ground.

I think it's fair to say that having any sort of test before being allowed to vote is a bad idea.  While we can all complain about the relative amount of knowledge, experience, and intelligence of the average voter, history has proven that attempting to block certain voters from the polls through a test will be abused more often than Sarah Palin says "you betcha".

At the same time, requiring that a voter actually take a proactive step to register themselves before an election is not a high bar to hurdle.  And while it doesn't show that the particular voter is smarter than the average American, it does at least show a minimum of interest in voting.  They had to do something themselves to vote... instead of someone coming to them.  Combine that with the ability to have anyone get an absentee ballot, and people don't have to do anything to vote any more.

If you're too lazy or apathetic to register to vote yourself, then odds are you're too lazy and apathetic to pay attention to the news, and make a barely informed decision.  Rounding up all those people to vote doesn't make me feel very warm and fuzzy about the election process.  It is also not convincing to state that a particular candidate has a "mandate to lead" because they secured the vote of those people.