Motor-Voter Bill Signed Into Law -- Rep. Al Swift Sees Five-Year Effort Finally Pay Off
WASHINGTON - President Clinton rallied campus activists, disabled advocates and minority civic leaders under a big tent on the White House lawn yesterday as he signed U.S. Rep. Al Swift's "motor voter" bill into law.
Clinton's signature closed the Bellingham Democrat's five-year effort to enact an idea first proposed to him by Washington's Republican Secretary of State Ralph Munro.
Swift recalled a hearing he chaired in 1988 when Munro brandished his driver license and asked, "Why can't this be my registration card?"
The landmark law allows voter registration by mail, through driver licensing, and other governmental assistance agencies, such as those that serve the disabled.
The issue has been sharply partisan. Republicans complained that wider access would invite rampant fraud - with illegal aliens slipping onto voter rolls and bureaucrats swaying registrants.
Swift crafted safeguards that could not survive President Bush's 1992 veto but were revived with Clinton's election.
"The State of Washington instituted a similar measure during the 1992 election, and their motor-voter program registered in that state alone an additional 186,000 people," he said. A record of 2.8 million Washingtonians signed up to vote, and 86 percent followed through with trips to the polls.
"We don't have a person to waste," Clinton said, hailing the struggles the African American community endured to win greater access to the ballot box in the 1960s. He also noted how apathy has dwindled, as citizens jam congressional phone lines and their letters arrive in White House mailbins in record numbers.
Promoters from Rock the Vote, a youth-targeted registration campaign, won presidential accolades, as did traditional political groups like the League of Women Voters and the NAACP. Congressional backers found their registration drive at rock concerts and on MTV announcements instrumental in enlisting the nation's youngest voters.
Rock the Vote had dramatic success in its Puget Sound drive, signing up 2,700 young voters at last September's Drop-in-the-Park concert in Seattle. The draw was the campaign's largest for any single event nationwide.
"When you go to a Metallica show, people don't expect to be able to register to vote," said Kate Ellison, assistant music director of Seattle rock station KXRX-FM, who gathered 65 volunteers to take classes to become registrars.
Democratic organizers, who did better at wooing voters between age 18 and 24, credit the broader coalition of registration campaigners as making the difference.