Holder: U.S. Should Automatically Register 'Every Eligible Voter'

On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said the United States should automatically register “every eligible voter in America” by coordinating modern technology and existing databases that are available, while insisting in-person voter fraud rarely occurs. 

In a speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Holder said “modern technology provides ways to address many of the problems that impede the efficient administration of elections.”

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold hearings on “the state of the right to vote” on December 19; any changes to the nation’s voting laws would need Congressional approval.

Republicans concerned about the prevalence of voter fraud are hesitant to adopt laws that could make the elections more susceptible to fraud.

Holder, though, insisted voter fraud was essentially non-existent, even though a man posing as Holder was able to obtain his ballot earlier in the year at a Washington, D.C. polling location. 

“You can’t get groups of sufficient numbers of people that are willing to face that possibility and try to influence an election, which is why in-person voter fraud simply doesn’t exist to the extent that some on the right have said that it does,” Holder claimed. 

Holder also said the U.S. should consider having elections on the weekends. 

“We should rethink this whole notion that voting only occurs on Tuesday, which is an agricultural notion from way back,” Holder said. “Why not have voting on weekends?”