Registration is the voter's responsibility

The whine from the left never seems to stop. Now Missouri's very own Rep. Lacy Clay of St. Louis sees a conspiracy among public assistance agencies in Missouri to deny voter registration information to minority aid recipients.

Clay and his cronies seem to see conspiracies around every corner. He held a press conference Wednesday to call for an investigation over a decline in voter registration from agencies that provide food stamps and welfare benefits to the poor. In a study commissioned by the ultra-liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), voter registration numbers from public agencies have substantially declined over the past decade. Clay sees that as proof of government trying to suppress low-income registration - which just coincidentally vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

Missouri's "motor voter" law says that public agencies should inform low-

income residents of voter registration information and have material on hand to register. I think the law stinks and have since it was implemented.

I have wondered in the past why we feel compelled to make the voting process such a casual undertaking. People should be informed before they vote, regardless of their party affiliation. But since large blocs of people consistently fail to register, we take that as a sign they lack access to the registration process. What it actually means is that far too many people are just too darned lazy to follow the simple registration process so we try to make it convenient for them.

The reason low-income minority voters fail to register should be blamed on Clay and his party. It's the Democrats who fail to mobilize their voters. It's not a lack of information laying on the desk of some food stamp distribution center.

If Clay had his way, you'd be able to phone in your vote on a cell phone within a week or two of election day. He wants to make the process so casual, so non-committal, that the sacred process of voting is diluted. He knows his voters won't get off their butt to register or vote, so he wants someone else to take over that responsibility. The first process is to point the finger of blame at anyone other than himself.

Registering to vote should be simple, accessible and understandable. But it should remain the responsibility of the voter to take that important step. If Clay had his way we would eliminate registration and allow anyone and everyone to vote come election day. Maybe that's why the feds monitor the voting in St. Louis because of the massive fraud and irregularities there.