New York, March 27—In my opinion people should vote, but does that mean we should make them vote? If you don’t vote in Mexico, you get fined, and look what happens in Mexico. The same party wins, year after year, but the requisite political theater is enacted. Everybody votes. President Carter believes that everybody should vote, and proposes to increase the number of votes by easing registration provisions. Last summer, largely at candidate Carter’s bidding, the Democratically dominated House of Representatives passed a so-called postcard registration law, which did not get through the Senate before that Congress went out of session. It would have permitted registration in any federal election by completing a postcard and mailing it in.
The notion that that which people ought to do is rightly encouraged by making it physically easy for them todoitis very American. At a certain level it makes sense. We believe that children should go to school, so we provide buses to take them to school. We believe that people should have their chests X-rayed, so we send around mobile X-ray units to catch them on the fly.
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