In 2000, Republicans stole the Florida election by disenfranchising as many Democratic voters as they could through various methods, most famously the phony felon purge of as many as 100,000 Democratic voters.

When Bush's appointees took over the Justice Department, they took their voter disenfranchisement strategies "national," most famously by pushing photo ID requirements through Republican-controlled state legislatures.

In April, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court ruled in favor of photo ID requirements, even though there was no evidence of voters registering under false identities. The Court ruled that any possible voter disenfranchisement was theoretical, and therefore not necessary for them to consider.

Only a few days later in the Indiana primary, the "theoretical" voter disenfranchisement proved all too real, as a dozen nuns over 80 years of age who had no drivers' licenses were prevented from voting.

But that hasn't stopped Republicans in other states from pushing even harder to disenfranchise voters. Missouri is leading the way by pushing for a state Constitutional Amendment requiring voters to provide documents to prove their U.S. citizenship. Robin Carnahan (D), Missouri's secretary of state, estimates that the measure could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship. As Steve Benen writes,

Proving U.S. citizenship is tougher, creating a hurdle that’s harder to clear. Missouri voters would likely have to produce an original birth certificate, naturalization papers, or a passport in order to participate in an election, and a whole lot of eligible voters would likely be denied a ballot or decide in advance it's not worth the trouble. Maybe five justices would sign off on this, maybe not, but it’s not obvious.

(These Republicans are apparently unaware that John McCain might not be eligible to vote in Missouri because he was born in Panana outside the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone.)

The response from Democrats and progressives, as on virtually all issues, has been mostly ineffectual and limited entirely to defense - even though the Republican efforts are nakedly partisan and un-American. As Digby writes,

This whittling away at the franchise will be one of the greatest accomplishments of the conservative movement when all is said and done. They simply don’t believe in the democratic concept of one person one vote. Never have.

So here's an "aggressive progressive" strategy: why don't we go on offense and make voter registration automatic for all U.S. citizens based on tax and benefit databases?

What possible objection could conservatives raise, as long as citizenship was accurately determined by official records?

The idea of automatic registration is entirely practical because most states have fairly complete databases of all state residents who are citizens.

43 states have an income tax, and therefore have a database of everyone who files a tax return, whether or not their income is high enough to pay taxes. (Low-income workers file tax returns to receive the Earned Income Tax Credit.) The poorest citizens qualify for benefits like food stamps, which are also stored in a state database.

As long as these files contain citizenship data, they would be perfect for automatically registering voters. (Non-citizens who live in the shadows are much less likely to be in state databases, so they would not be automatically registered under this proposal.)

I recently proposed this idea to some New York State activists and lawmakers. The idea is consistent with the New York State Constitution, Article II on Suffrage:

Section 1. Every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people and upon all questions submitted to the vote of the people provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age or over and shall have been a resident of this state, and of the county, city, or village for thirty days next preceding an election.

Since every citizen is entitled to vote under our state Constitution, why not register them automatically?

Several objections have been raised, but none of them seem fatal to the idea.

One objection is that the state Constitution requires voters to make "personal application":

Section 6. The legislature may provide by law for a system or systems of registration whereby upon personal application a voter may be registered and his or her registration continued so long as he or she shall remain qualified to vote from an address within the jurisdiction of the board with which such voter is registered.

However, Section 6 is optional - the legislature may create such a system, but the Constitution does not require it with a "shall." So a law creating a system of automatic registration would simply have to replace current laws that establish a system of "personal application."

Another objection is the method of determining citizenship and 30-day residency:

Section 5. Laws shall be made for ascertaining, by proper proofs, the citizens who shall be entitled to the right of suffrage hereby established, and for the registration of voters; which registration shall be completed at least ten days before each election. Such registration shall not be required for town and village elections except by express provision of law.

The current system relies on the voter registration form, which includes a sworn affidavit that the voter is both a citizen and a 30-day resident. The Board of Elections doesn't double-check, relying instead on the deterrent value of criminal charges against a registrant who lies. This deterrent is obviously strong enough that one rarely hears about ineligible voters voting illegally.

Here I need to do more research, but I suspect the records I would rely upon - tax and benefit records - include citizenship and residency information that is at least as reliable - if not more reliable - than the self-reported voter registration forms.

One final objection is that automatic registration would require voters to be assigned to "no party," since there is no way for a state computer to know which party a voter would like to join. This would require a second step of asking the new voter whether they would like to join one of the state's qualified parties (Democrats, Republicans, Conservative, Working Families, Right-to-Life, etc.). But rather than being an obstacle, this is an opportunity to provide new voters with useful information about the reason for joining a party - voting in primaries - which is otherwise missing from voter registration forms.

So if these are the main objections, I believe automatic voter registration is both consistent with the state Constitution, and an idea whose time has come.