Always Helpful California Democrats Want to 'Preregister' Kids to Vote

The party that always gets the dead vote out is now looking to preregister 16-year-olds and wants to allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries.

As if the Democrats don't have enough of a lock on California already.

A pair of Assembly bills designed to bring more young people into the voting booths are being fought by Republicans who worry that too many of those new voters will be liberal Democrats.

One of the measures would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to "preregister" to vote, while the other would allow 17-year-olds to vote in a primary election if they will be 18 by the date of the next general election. Both bills have prompted straight party-line votes, with no hint of GOP support.

While Democrats sponsoring the bills say they are merely good-government measures, studies show that their party would get a major election-day boost if more young voters cast ballots.

Exit polls done during this year's presidential primary season showed that the number of voters younger than 30 has more than doubled since the 2004 and 2000 elections, with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, drawing an enthusiastic and growing response from those young voters.

It's only natural that young voters would be more inclined to be liberal and to register Democratic, said Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Hesperia (San Bernardino County), vice chair of the Assembly's Election and Redistricting Committee.

"I'm a pretty conservative guy now, but when I was 17 I was a raging liberal," Adams said. "You start to see problems as you get older. As you get older, you get wiser."

He also argued that it would be wrong to set up a situation where political parties could send organizers into California high schools and attempt to recruit impressionable students.

That's a laugh, considering the schools are already virtual liberal indoctrination centers.

There already are states that preregister and it's not the worst idea in the world, but these bills will likely die in the Assembly since the GOP isn't going to offer any help to the Democrats.

Why help further your own demise?