As If Registering to Vote Weren’t Tough Enough

By NADIA PFLAUM

An alert reader pointed us to a curious passage on the Kansas City Election Board’s Web siteunder the heading “Where Can I Register to Vote?”

By Mail: Because Missouri law requires voter registrations to be a certain format and printed on a thicker type of paper than that used by regular printers, voter registrations cannot be completed online, or from a registration form printed from the internet.

Bullshit, our reader said. After all, the Missouri Secretary of State site’s voter section provides voter registration forms that a user can download according to county, print out, complete and mail to his or her election board. Why would the KC Election Board’s rules differ? The reader saw the KC office’s language as a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise voters with unnecessary extra steps — it asks a citizen to fill out a request for a voter registration card, mail it in and then wait for a card to be mailed back to be filled out and sent away again by mail.