Online voter registration?

Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual -- or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. — Samuel Adams

My state, Utah, has become the third state with online voter registration.

I acknowledge that voting is a right. But it also is a heavy responsibility. I agree that far too few exercise this right. Worse, far too few who do vote live up to the responsibility. It is my observation that two-thirds of voters are uninformed or misinformed -- from both major parties. The consequence is the horrid government we have -- especially at the federal level.

I find it troubling that politicians, bureaucrats, and news reporters see a need to make voting and voter registration easier and more convenient. There have even been calls for making election day a holiday and for financial compensation for voters!

Because their target is people who are too lazy to vote on their own, let alone study issues and candidates, such get-out-the-vote efforts are generally hostile to individual liberty and generally benefit only the growth of a bloated and tyrannical government and advocates thereof.

If a person hasn't sufficiently studied the issues and candidates to make an informed decision as a voter, he has a moral responsibility to not vote. He has no business canceling the vote of those who take it seriously! And we all have a moral responsibility to not encourage that person to vote.

In his Second Epistle to Timothy, the Apostle Paul wrote:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. - 2 Timothy 4:3-4

Paul was addressing churchgoers who seek pastors whose teachings match their own and not necessarily the whole truth as taught by Jesus and his Prophets and Apostles.

However, I find that Paul's prediction applies to politics as surely as it does to religion. Far to many voters seek political representatives who tell them only what their "itching ears" want to hear. Far too few voters truly study the issues and the candidates. The care only about their selfish and ignorant wishes.

We have made it far to easy to vote. It is my opinion that we need to make it harder -- not easier -- for the lazy, selfish, uninformed and misinformed to register to vote and to vote. I think a basic civics test similar to the test taken by new naturalized citizens as well as a simple current events test would be appropriate.