Today is the voter registration deadline.

Kari Chisholm

In order to receive a mail-in ballot for the election that closes on January 26, you must be registered to vote by today. If you've turned 18 since November 2008, arrived in Oregon since November 2008, or just never registered to vote before, get it done today. (If you're 17, but will turn 18 by January 26, you must register now, too.) The voter registration deadline is a POSTMARK deadline, so just get it in the mail.

You can verify that you're registered to vote at your current address here. (While you're at it, verify a few friends, family, and co-workers too - and make sure they're correctly registered to vote.)

Need to register to vote? Here's the form. Print it out, fill it out, and mail it in. (Make sure it's postmarked today, not sitting in your outbox or mailbox!)

Over the O's opinion blog, Brent Sandmeyer has an excellent guest column advocating for Election Day voter registration. In this era of computerized systems, it simply makes no sense to forbid someone from registering within the 21 days before an election - right up to same-day registration by walking into a county elections office.

The seven states that practice Election Day registration and allow citizens to register and vote without deadlines reliably see 10 to 12 percent higher voter turnout. In Oregon, that would mean a majority of voters would have their say in special elections.

The Oregon Legislature instituted the current 20-day deadline in 1986 as a paranoid response to the Rajneesh cult's reported plot to take over the town of Antelope by busing in homeless Portland residents to vote in a local election, an idea the cult itself abandoned as unfeasible. Oregon now has a central voter database to prevent multiple registrations, eliminating the possibility of busloads of voters hijacking any elections. In states with Election Day registration, there has been no record of fraud occurring as a result.

In 2007, with 14 co-sponsors, then-state Rep. Diane Rosenbaum sponsored House Joint Resolution 43 to remove the 20-day restriction from the Oregon Constitution, which would have paved the way for Election Day registration. Unfortunately, the resolution didn't make it to a vote before the end of the legislative session.

Brent calls for the Lege to address this in 2011. I disagree. The Lege should take it up in February, and put the constitutional amendment on the ballot in May - so that we can end this silly rule in time to allow Oregonians to do same-day registration in November 2010.

By Kari Chisholm Jan. 05, 2010