Voter Registration Forms in Color

According to the New York Post, Peter Rivera, a New York State Assemblyman from the Bronx, seeks to introduce a bill to require racial and ethnic data on voter registration forms.

This is, of course, absurd on its face. For one thing, there has not really been any racial purity amongst the population for the past 2,000 years or so. How would someone of diverse parentage and grandparentage fill out the form? And, of no less concern, what would be gained by placing what would inevitably be a strain on the New York State Budget, which is in poor shape as it now is?

What is even more amazing (though not at all unwelcome) is that the Congress for Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) and the NAACP are not warming up to the idea! Given the historical stances taken by those two groups, one would not be surprised to see either back such a scheme.

But it does sort of make sense for CORE and NAACP to steer clear of this one. They stand to gain little, and in fact, it may well backfire by yielding statistics which would embarrass them. There is too much of whatever credibility CORE and NAACP may possess that would be risked. Hey, it is so easy to register to vote by mail anymore that NAACP and CORE would be very hard pressed to find any of their constituents actually being denied the right to vote on racial or ethnic grounds.

Whether the nonplussedness (if there is such a word) of CORE and NAACP is based upon principle (which I sort of doubt) or practicality, it should be a signal to Rivera to forget about the whole thing and stick his proposed bill into the paper shredder.