Oregon made history on Friday by becoming the first state to automatically register all eligible Oregonians to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license. Will other states follow?
Under the new law, residents of Oregon will have to opt-out of the voting rolls if they don’t want to be registered to vote, otherwise they’ll be sent a ballot 20 days before the election. Though all states are required under the Federal Motor Voter Law to make the option of registering to vote available to anyone getting a driver’s license, Oregon is the first that would registration mandatory. For many, this hailed a victory for raising voter turnout and lowering the barriers for younger and poorer Oregonians to vote.
“Oregon takes it further than any other state by putting the burden on the government,” said Myrna Perez, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Project at the Brennan Center for Justice, in The Los Angeles Times. “Instead of asking voters, ‘Do you want to register to vote?’ they ask voters, ‘Do you not want to vote?’”
So will you be seeing a mandatory voter registration at a DMV near you? Only time will tell. Although Oregon has been a trendsetter in this area before, being the first state to allow voting by mail, this move is read by many as a bit more controversial.
But though many claim the bill is “agnostic” in its political leanings, some aren’t convinced. As Stefan Passantino noted in an LXBN TV interview, the law passed the legislature without a single Republican vote:
So to some extent it clearly is a political issue, and one that at least Republicans thought was not something they were in favor of. One could anticipate that is likely a political calculation in terms of those who are newly registered voters might be perceived to be more likely to vote Democrat than Republican.
…What Colorado has really shown is that sometimes the political minds are not really correct. There was some controversy in Colorado that when they had moved to the voting by mail this was going to allow them to become more blue than it was. Well you only have to look at Colorado in 2014’s vote; it’s actually a very purple state that actually had some key races go the other way, with vote by mail. I think you might find a lot of political scientists who will say, this might be a rising tide that lifts all votes, Republican, Democrat, and independent voters, not necessarily one that’s going to create a partisan advantage.
Passantino adds that while there are many concerns swirling around voter fraud and privacy risks with the new voter mandate, Oregon seems to be doing their best to allay those concerns.
So will there be automatic voter registration at the polls near you? We’ll see how the wind opts.