STUMP » Articles » Obamacare Watch: 30 March 2014 -- Voter Registration, Incompetency, and Not Thinking Things Through » 30 March 2014, 12:59

So a few days ago, I heard about this ACLU victory: California to Comply with Voter Registration Law According to Settlement

SACRAMENTO – In a victory for voting rights, the state of California has agreed to mail voter registration cards to nearly 4 million Californians who have signed up for health insurance through the state health exchange, Covered California, and to ensure that Californians who apply for health benefits through the exchange going forward are provided voter registration opportunities. The action is the result of a settlement agreement reached with the ACLU of California, the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, Demos, and Project Vote, which threatened legal action over the state’s failure to comply with the National Voter Registration Act and state laws.

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To avoid litigation, Covered California agreed that by no later than the next open enrollment period in the fall of 2014, it will incorporate required voter registration services into all processes by which a consumer engages with Covered California, including online, in person, by mail, and telephone transactions. Immediately, Covered California will do a remedial voter registration mailing to the nearly 4 million people who applied for health benefits since the launch of the Affordable Care Act on October 1, 2013, and it will continue these mailings until there is full compliance.

My original reaction was: This is interesting parasitism. I’m sure California loves amassing extra expenses. (the Motor Voter law isn’t directly related to PPACA, but whatever.)

When someone remarked that they should use gun registration/licenses to contact people about voter registration, I remarked

I’m pretty sure those with guns (or, rather, gun licenses) have no problems with registering to vote. Given the paperwork for voter registration tends to be less onerous.

You would think the same with respect to those who did manage to battle through the exchanges — voter registration should be a snap.
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I’m just saying that they may not want to have the people who had to deal with the exchange crap voting.

Because they may be a wee bit peeved over the matter.

I think the ACLU didn’t think this one through.

And now I know they didn’t think this one through. Or at least, some bureaucratic flunky thought they’d get cute

LA MESA, Calif. – A local couple called 10News concerned after they received an envelope from the state’s Obamacare website, Covered California. Inside was a letter discussing voter registration and a registration card pre-marked with an “x” in the box next to Democratic Party.

The couple – who did not want their identity revealed – received the letter and voter registration card from their health insurance provider Covered California, the state-run agency that implements President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

They have lived in La Mesa for years and they have always been registered to vote Republican. Now, they are perplexed as to how the voter registration card pre-marked Democrat ended up in their mailbox.
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Covered California began mailing out voter signup cards to nearly 4 million enrollees last week after being threatened with a lawsuit by voting rights groups. But that does not explain the pre-filled out voter registration card.

“It’s a waste of money because there’s an awful lot of people who are going to get this that are already registered and they don’t need to. I can see that, but I can’t see putting x on the form before it’s given to me in a little bitty box that nobody’s really going to notice,” said the recipient of the mailer.

Likely it was just some office drone getting cute.

But come on. Let’s step through this. You send voter registration forms to people who obviously could deal with an infuriating bureaucratic requirement (might these people already be registered to vote? DON’T YOU HAVE IDENTIFYING INFO FROM THE FRICKIN EXCHANGES WHICH YOU CAN CHECK AGAINST VOTER ROLLS?) These people may not be all that pleased with their exchange experience. And now, you, the happy Democratic warrior, just “help” people by pre-checking a Democrat registration.

Why?

Just because one is registered for a particular party means, at most, you’ll vote in those primaries (I don’t know California’s primary rules). Doesn’t mean you’d vote for a Democrat.

And if you’re already ticked over what you think is a Democrat screwup (as Obamacare is all-Dem, and California is also all-Dem), you’re really not going to be amused to find yourself a registered Dem when you show up for primary day. You may even want to mess with the primary.

I mean, if you’re going to mess with people, do it in some useful way.

It seems to me it was probably some state worker idiot who did this.

Or it could have been just an innocent error. (…stuffing envelopes, the worker didn’t notice that someone had marked on the registration card. They had a stack of these cards and wasn’t paying attention.)

I don’t care, either way. At the very least, they should check their voter info against the Obamacare exchange info and not send registration stuff to people already registered. That shouldn’t be all that difficult.

And, if it is, that’s just one more stamp of incompetency.

Therefore, OBAMACARE MUST BE DESTROYED.