The Same Day Registration Act would let people register at the polling place on Election Day rather than requiring registration weeks or months ahead of time, as most states do.

Same-day registration is already law in seven states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, plus the District of Columbia. Common Cause claims those states see voter-turnout rates as much as 7 percent higher than others. North Dakota is the only state to do without voter registration altogether.

In a statement, Ellison outlined the advantage of such a system:

Minnesota routinely leads the nation in voter turnout – usually over 70 percent. … Enacting a National Election Day Registration law would do for the nation what same day registration has done for our State – give a voice to all who want to vote.

A Caltech/MIT study (pdf) published earlier this year shot down the two biggest criticisms of same-day voter registration — the potential for fraud and additional costs imposed on local election administrators.

[I]n the six states that currently use election day registration, there is not an unusually high number of cases of voting fraud.  In particular, we have interviewed local election officials in Minnesota and Wisconsin, especially in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Milwaukee areas, and have found only a handful of cases of fraud involving a very small number of votes over the last decade. This in our opinion is due not to the unique political cultures of these six states, but instead to the fact that these states have made substantial investments in minimizing the risks  associated with election day registration. [...]

We have been able to find no evidence that election jurisdictions that have election day registration have significantly higher costs per vote, so it is not clear that election day registration is necessarily more costly.  Rather, election day registration simply moves much of the pre-election burden of registration tasks to the post-election period; that is, rather than having to expend resources in the registration period before the election to update databases, most of this work can occur after the election.

Of course, the study also found that same-day registration could increase turnout among certain demographics, especially the young and minorities — which tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Smart money says Republicans will find some reason to oppose it.

I cast my ballot this morning in the Petworth neighborhood, where I reside. The line was long — I waited for about an hour and a half — but without incident. There was no ID check, no signs or instructions to guide me and no privacy — I filled out my paper ballot in plain sight of everyone present. But the mood was generally upbeat.

Given the demographics of my neighborhood and the conversations I overheard, I predict the precinct will go 98 percent for Sen. Barack Obama.

Some photos from the polls:

The line outside the police station, where Precinct 45 cast its votes.

Thought I was home free when I got inside the building. Not the case.

The disconcertingly open voting stands.

My ballot -- blank, of course (I have SOME journalistic integrity).

The judge also revealed that he had voted early on Friday and had to stand in line for more than two hours. “It was quite a civics lesson,” Williams said.

The Advancement Project, which joined in the lawsuit with the NAACP, issued a statement saying, “With 500,000 new voters and high expected turnout the burden shouldn’t be on voters, it should be on the Commonwealth to make sure voting is accessible.”

Luckily, Nathan Hodge at Wired’s excellent Danger Room blog reports that voters in Oregon may not have to suffer the way I suffered.

CIA-linked private military contractor Evergreen Defense & Security Services offered to post sentries at Oregon polling stations on election day, “detaining troublemakers” and making sure voters “do not get out of control.”

In an e-mail to local election supervisors, obtained by the McMinnville, Oregon News Register, Evergreen president Tom Wiggins said he “recognized the potential conflict” that could occur on November 4th. “Never has there been a more heated battle in the race for president.”

You don’t want those voters to get out of control, right? Especially those, you know, NEGRO voters??? Everyone reacts well to the sight of geared-up paramilitary dudes in front of polling places, particularly those from the African American community, who remember what it was like to have the cops “protect” them at the polling places.

Alas, Hodge writes, Evergreen’s sales pitch was turned down. Is there no justice in this world anymore?

The presentation was mostly a rehash of now-familiar talking points: minorities are targeted; Samuel J. Wurzelbacher (aka Joe the Plumber) would be purged if he were a new voter because his name is misspelled on Ohio voting rolls; and it’s more likely that someone will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate a voter on Election Day.

More noteworthy was the center’s proposed solution to voter suppression — universal voter registration.

Ideally, everyone should automatically become registered upon turning 18, said Brennan Center Deputy Director Wendy Weiser. Nevertheless, because there are more people in DMV registries than on voter rolls, “even using existing lists, we can do far better than we are currently doing.”

Voter suppression in elections past. (Brennan Center)

Representatives of the Brennan Center at the news conference largely skirted ACORN and the charges of voter fraud leveled against it.

After the presentation, I asked Michael Waldman, the director of the Brennan Center and a former head speechwriter for President Clinton, about the threat of voter suppression as a result of GOP challenges to ACORN’s registration lists.

“I think it’s a major excuse for voter suppression,” he responded. While there have been problems with ACORN’s registration efforts, he added that “the vast amount of good they’ve done ouweighs that.”

Waldman’s admonition to voters: “Don’t take no for an answer.” If you get turned away from the polls, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE and let the good guys rush to your defense.

As the Associated Press reports, the court, sitting en banc (all 16 judges), reversed the ruling just last week of its own three-judge panel that had said that the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) does not require states to match all new voters’ data. The Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brummer, had said that matching all such data would be far too difficult to complete before Election Day.

The Ohio ruling is the latest in a series of cases around the country disputing what HAVA requires. Republicans in Florida, Washington, Wisconsin and elsewhere have maintained that states must verify all new voter registration information against new state databases that were mandated by law. Only if the information matches should the voter’s vote count.

Democrats and voting-rights advocates, on the other hand, have insisted that such a rule is not mandated by HAVA, and would disenfranchise tens of thousands of people in each state, because typos, nick-names, name changes and other technical problems with the data frequently prevent the matching of legitimate voters’ identifying information.

In Florida, for example, some 20,000 voters were prevented or delayed from voting in 2006 because of matching problems.

Given the close race in Ohio, whether all votes are counted could make all the difference.

Because of an overlap between the beginning of absentee voting 35 days before Election Day, which started yesterday, and the Oct. 6 end of voter registration, Ohio allows one week of same-day voting and registration.

Republicans had fought hard against that rule, designed to make voting easier, by bringing several lawsuits, charging that early votes and same-day registration lend themselves to attempts at voter fraud. These are just some of several GOP lawsuits to end related attempts to challenge Democratic votes in key swing states.

In general, Republican lawsuits around the country have been urging states to restrict voting rights — claiming the threat of massive voter fraud.

Democrats respond that Republicans are just trying to prevent voting by the poor, young, elderly and minorities. All these demographics are more likely to vote Democrat, and are the target of major Democratic Party get-out-the-vote efforts.

In Ohio yesterday, both state and federal courts upheld Ohio’s right to allow early voting and same-day registration. It was a big victory for Ohio’s Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner.

Still, the federal court yesterday ruled that counties must allow party poll observers during early voting, leaving Republicans a window of opportunity to suppress the Democratic vote.

Last night, Republicans assured their ranks that they would not let early voting proceed without a fight — or at least, a large number of voter challenges.

“This is a win for Jennifer Brunner’s partisan efforts to aide the Democrat turnout strategy,” said Ohio Republican Party chairman Bob Bennett. “Fortunately, the federal court overturned her attempts to shut out observers and conduct the absentee voting process without public scrutiny. We will continue to fight the secretary of state’s partisan maneuvering in this election, and we will win in spite of it.”

Meanwhile, the Ohio GOP Web site yesterday was instructing Republican voters to take advantage of the secretary of state’s early voting and same-day registration rules — noting this was an important opportunity for Republicans to express support for the party by voting early for Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

I heard that a Republican County Chairman right here in Michigan said that they’re keeping a list of foreclosed homes, suggesting that if you’ve lost your home, you should also lose your vote. I have a different idea. I think that if you’re worried about losing your home, you should vote for the guys who are going to help you keep it!

It’s not surprising that GOP operatives would plan on bringing fraud claims against hapless people who’ve been forced out of their homes; I’d expect to see that happening in every state where the election is close and foreclosures rates have been high.

It’s all part of a broad-based effort by Republicans, as Art Levine documented recently in The American Prospect, to spread the myth of widespread voter fraud, and to enact restrictive laws and employ intimidation tactics to keep low-income, elderly and minority voters -– most of whom tend to vote Democratic — away from the polls.

Florida, to cite one state, has started purging voters from the rolls if the information they register with doesn’t match the information the state has in its own records. If the person got married and changed her name, for example, or if, as often happens, a state worker typed the name or Social Security number incorrectly into a database, then that voter could be dropped from the rolls.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is representing groups suing Florida to challenge its law, the Social Security Admin. reports a 46 percent failure rate when trying to match voter registration applications. Florida officials recently admitted in a challenge to the law that typos by election workers are the most common cause for the failures.

Macomb County party chair James Carabelli today denied The Michigan Messenger’s reports that he planned to challenge voters on the basis of foreclosure notices. But no matter: because of the restrictive voting laws like Florida’s enacted around the country, thousands of struggling Americans — whether because of a new address, a changed name or a clerk’s typo — will find casting their votes this Election Day to be far more difficult than they had anticipated.