What an opportunity! On this election day, we in Massachusetts can help secure a victory for democracy.
A democracy is a system where, at least in theory, the people, not autocrats and oligarchs, are the pillars of government. Undergirding democracy is the right to vote, which, as Thomas Paine wrote in 1795, “is the primary right by which other rights are protected.” The late civil rights icon U.S. Rep. John Lewis characterized the vote as “the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society.”
Today that right is under sustained attack. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that federal courts cannot remedy even the most grotesque partisan gerrymandering. And in 2024, the Court approved sleight-of-hand racial gerrymandering. It instructed politicians drawing racist electoral maps to claim that their motivation was not to disenfranchise Black people, but instead to insist that they merely were exercising raw political power in accord with the 2019 decision. Voila! The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been eviscerated.
So much for protecting the right to vote.
Then there’s the executive branch. At the end of his first term, Donald Trump attempted to disenfranchise 81 million voters by fomenting a coup on Jan. 6, 2021.
His second term exhibits unrelenting attempts to control and predetermine election results. Among the dozens of examples are the Executive Order, now blocked by the courts, that gave the U.S. Postal Service (which Trump can control) the right to refuse to deliver mail-in ballots, his recent threats of lengthy prison sentences for California election officials if they count ballots the administration claims should not be tabulated, and the unprecedented federal lawsuit demanding that a court block certification of the Alaska Senate election if the Republican candidate loses by a small margin.
We should not underestimate the significance of his lying thousands of times about the 2020 election being stolen from him. According to recent polling, 63 percent of Republicans believe that lie.
I believe that if the Democrats win the midterms decisively, Trump won’t attempt and/or the Supreme Court won’t sanction an authoritarian takeover of the legislative branch. I pray my view is not Pollyannish. And I add this caveat: if the election results for the House and Senate are close enough to embolden Trump, all bets are off.
Meanwhile, there is something we can do.
Question 4 on the Massachusetts ballot asks whether voters approve a law that establishes election day registration.
In Massachusetts, if you haven’t registered at least 10 days before an election, you can’t vote. That requirement, as surveys in Massachusetts and the experience in other states show, suppresses the vote — for no legitimate reason.
Indeed, 23 states and DC — blue states, red states and purple states, big and small, rural and urban, all have same-day voter registration, including, for example, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, California, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Iowa, Minnesota, and Virginia.
The experience of those 23 states, some with election day registration for more than 50 years, is that it works, is accurate and secure. That was my perception when doing voter protection work in New Hampshire on presidential election day some years ago.
Under Question 4, election day registration will require the same secure standards as registering any other day — identification and proof of residency. Plus, the voter must execute an affidavit of eligibility, which, if false, carries a five-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine.
There are, of course, many reasons people haven’t registered. They may have recently moved to Massachusetts. Many eligible voters don’t focus on issues and candidates until a week or so before the election when they see ads and mailers and speak with people knocking on their doors. Should those factors disqualify a person from voting, contrary to the principle that involvement in the electoral process is a civic good?
Importantly, Question 4 provides a remedy to persons who might be required to cast a provisional ballot because they’ve moved or changed their name or because there’s a minor typo on the voting roll. Question 4 allows such clerical errors to be corrected and for the voter to cast a regular ballot.
Obviously, Question 4 does not address the potential for election manipulation on a grand scale in battleground states. But it does answer the question asked many times by many people: what can I do?
And its passage not only will enfranchise up to 100,00 voters but also will stand as a testament to the importance that Massachusetts places on the right to vote.
For these reasons, because every eligible voter should be able to cast a vote that counts, dozens of labor unions, groups supporting working families as well as voting advocates, including the ACLU and the League of Women Voters, are urging “yes” on Question 4.
This election day we have an opportunity to bolster democracy, which brings to mind the diary entry of Anne Frank on March 26, 1944, “How wonderful it is that no one has to wait even a minute to gradually change the world.”
Bill Newman, a Northampton attorney and co-host of Talk the Talk on WHMP, writes a regular column.