Permitting people to register to vote on Election Day in today’s mobile, aging and poorer society is one of the best ways we have to assure that we retain a participative democracy.

I have heard our secretary of state says he believes our voting laws are like the 1800s. Hmm, basically only white men who owned property and/or had enough money to get to the polls and to pay poll taxes could vote.

Many working people could not vote or could not afford to vote. Women and people of color could not vote. We are more democratic now.

Democracy: “government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”

Requiring voter registration before Election Day and having to do it at our town offices pretty much takes us back to the old days. One has to have free time during town office hours. One has to have and be able to use transportation to the town offices twice.

Charlie Webster attempted unsuccessfully to show voter fraud. Webster’s statements are an intentional perversion of truth to disenfranchise folks by depriving them of their right to vote.

Denying people an opportunity to register when they arrive at the polls will disenfranchise many young people, the elderly, unsettled families, the disabled and disadvantaged.

Fraud: “intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right.”

This certainly hands an advantage to our growing plutocracy.

Plutocracy: “controlling class of the wealthy.”

Please vote “yes” on Question 1 on Election Day and keep Maine among the states with the most people participating in our elections.

Definitions are from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (an American dictionary).

Priscilla J. Jenkins

Winthrop