Registering to vote

by Matt Unrau
| March 11, 2010 12:48 PM

I'm sorry Sanders County, but it's official, I have de-registered(I'm not sure if you can do that or not) from Missoula County elections and registered for Sanders County.

No, noone asked me to, and I'm sure plenty of people that care about the future of this county hope I don't, but I firmly believe in the importance of voting in elections no matter your ignorance or immaturity level, and mine is still pretty high. At least that's what all my friends, family and everyone else who knows me say.

More than just registering I wanted to take the split second it took to become registered and show everyone how easy this process can be even for someone inherently as lazy as I am. Now I don't want to spoil the surprise, but the ease of registering falls somewhere in between moving your arm across your entire body to grab a potato chip during your television watching binge and actually getting up off the coach to grab a new bag of chips from the kitchen.

Now there are two ways to go about registering to vote. You can either call up the Clerk and Recorder office in Thompson Falls, 827-6922 and ask to be mailed a vote registration card. In Mineral County the phone number is 822-3520.

For those of you fearing mountains of paperwork, don't worry the card is twice the size of a postcard and half as difficult to produce(usually I work really hard to cram as many words on a postcard as I can until it's so impossibly teeny that noone could ever read them, sorta like this sentence).

Back to the actual card, there are only 14 spaces to fill out with the hardest question being your Montana Driver's License number, and that's only because I had to pull out my wallet to read the number.

After that, plus all the other information everyone intuitively has memorized, all you need to do is sign the bottom, put a stamp on the backside and throw it in the mailbox. The ladies working at the Clerk and Recorder Office are looking out for us by placing the address of their office on it, thereby skipping unneeded stress for ourselves.

After that they will mail you a voter confirmation card that you can stick in your wallet, but if you lose that no worries you can just show them your Driver's License at the polling place.

The other way to go about this is to drive to the courthouse, find the Clerk and Recorder Office and then repeat all steps except out of the comfort of your own home.

Now for those of you who are thinking this is a mighty inconvenience to be done every year, please do not fear. The first time I registered to vote in Missoula I was a sophomore in college and I was still registered to vote in Missoula up until Monday when my civic duty got transferred over to Sanders County.

Registering to vote is the first step in a very important process of having a say in your local government, and although the majority of people are registered to vote actually making it to the booth can be a chore and the numbers show it. Next week, I'll ramble a little bit about the luxury of absentee ballots and the ease with which government is allowing us to vote from home.