I had to take a few minutes away from commenting on sports to write about the Montana Legislature and same-day voter registration.

A bill (HB 88) was introduced in the Montana Legislature that would make the Friday before the election on Tuesday the last day someone could register to vote. According to this story, it seems that most people who turned out to speak about the bill opposed it. It was dead on arrival. That’s democracy.

I like HB 88. I like the idea of early voting but there should be a cut-off date, sometime before Election Day. The Friday before Election Day would be fine with me.

Although we have not discovered any fraud or corruption with the way it is currently done here in Montana, it seems there are more chances of it by allowing people to register until the polls close on Election Day…and sometimes later if they were already in line when the polls closed.

I think by allowing the election officials an extra couple of days to verify new voter registrations is fine. I won’t get into voter laziness and other things. A commentary posted by JP over at mtpolitics.net says it better than I can. You can read it HERE.

Maybe I’m not alone. An on-line poll on the Great Falls Tribune website today asked this question, “Should same-day registration on Election Day be eliminated?” At the time of this post, “Yes” was leading “No” 61-38 percent. The final results will be listed in the print copy of Thursday’s Tribune.