Two weeks after Election Day, voting rights issues continue to make news across the nation. There have been hotly contested elections, heated recounts and onerous voter identification rules, as well as unsupported accusations of election rigging coming from the White House. This prompted us to take a look at these issues closer to home. Morning Edition anchor Joe Mathieu spoke about the state of voting rights in Massachusetts with WGBH legal analyst and Northeastern law professor Daniel Medwed.
Joe Mathieu: So where does our state fall on the spectrum of states in terms of protecting voters' rights?
Daniel Medwed: There are a lot of good items of news here. Back in 2014, we passed a range of measures designed to upgrade our registration and election system, including measures to advance early voting online registration and pre-registration for 16-year-olds and processes for post-election audits. What's more, earlier this year we implemented a measure known as automatic registration. You sign up with the RMV or MassHealth, and then you're automatically eligible to vote. Then there's an old-school feature of our system that's pretty advantageous right now. We still rely to a large degree on paper ballots and that makes it somewhat difficult for, say, a certain country from Eastern Europe to penetrate our system and interfere with our results. So there are lots of good items of news, as I said.
Mathieu: That would suggest there's some bad news, as well.
Medwed: Yes, we do have our challenges. For one thing, there is a pending federal lawsuit against the city of Lowell. Lowell has what's called a citywide election system. Every resident of Lowell votes for all of the representatives on city council and so on. Some members of the community, especially people of color, claim that this results in voter dilution of minority representation. So, 13 Asian-American and Latino residents have sued Lowell clamoring for district-based voting. That would divide the city into a series of geographic districts, including at least one majority minority district, to better enhance and promote minority representation. That case is moving into a mediation posture in December, so we should stay tuned.
In addition, there are still lots of questions swirling around our state voter registration deadline law. Back in 1993, we passed a 20-day rule. You must register to vote at least 20 days before an election. Now the ACLU and some other groups have challenged the constitutionality of that law, claiming that it infringes on the franchise. However, earlier this year the Supreme Judicial Court upheld the law as a constitutional exercise of the legislative discretion — not that the law is ideal, but that it's not unconstitutional.
Mathieu So what's the basis for the state defending the 20-day rule?
Medwed: Well that's a good question. I think it boils down to an administrative concern: that it takes a while for the state to process all of these applications and that the 20 -day deadline is the appropriate balance between the right to vote and administrative feasibility.
But frankly, I think that argument is pretty specious and somewhat obsolete given developments in technology. Now about 15 states have same-day voting registration, and even our Secretary of State William Galvin has come out in favor of same-day registration. So now it's up to the legislature. Let's see whether the legislature seriously considers this.
Mathieu: So what's the timeline on that? Will this 20-day rule be resolved before we vote again in 2020?
Medwed: It very well could be, depending on how quickly the legislature acts and to the extent to which the public is pushing for this type of change.
Mathieu: So something very important to watch in the meantime. We thank you as always. WGBH News legal analyst and northeastern law professor Daniel Medwed. Thanks for being with us on WGBH’s Morning Edition.
