Jim Hightower

When election day comes around, about four out of ten of us are on the outside looking in unregistered.

In my state, registration ends a month before the election, so by the time things heat up and people start paying attention ... too late.

But that s about to change because of something called The Motor-Voter Bill. It ll let people register to vote when they get their driver s license or other government services. One stop shopping-yeah no more bureaucratic barriers after you sign up ... just go to the polls.

And besides being convenient, Motor Voter works! Several states have enacted their own versions of it ... and those states are showing as high as 70 percent turnout states without the program are down there in the 50 percent range.

And, one more thing: It s cheap. The system we have now costs as much as 15 bucks to register a single new voter. With Motor-Voter, you can do it for a quarter! You can t buy a stamp for that, so it s a mighty cheap way to bring more Americans into our system.

So what s been stopping this reform?

Politics. Ah, of course! Some incumbents don t want more Americans voting, so they don t want to make participation more convenient. One senator, for example, even went so far as to claim that non-voters are simply people who are happy with the status quo. Happy? Senator, if you get one digit dumber, they ll have to start watering you twice a week.

This is Jim Hightower saying, Motor-Voter brings people inside the American system, where they belong. Honk if your own senators and representatives supported the Motor-Voter bill. If they didn t, try to run em over. Electorally speaking, of course.