Election Day 2018: Students at the University of California, Irvine, fill out provisional ballots while others wait in line to vote.

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Should Voter Registration Be Automatic?

The number of Americans who voted in 2018 set a record for a midterm election. Even with the higher-than-usual turnout, just half of those who were eligible to vote actually cast ballots. Compared with other democracies, the United States has long had low voter turnout rates (see graph). One possible way to increase the number of people voting is to make it easier to register to vote. Some states have started automatically registering those eligible when they apply for a driver’s license.

Two public policy experts—one at a liberal election reform organization and the other from a conservative think tank—debate whether making voter registration automatic in this way is a good idea.

February 17, 2020

Voting is the foundation of American democracy, and registering to vote is one of the first steps toward participating. Registering to vote shouldn’t be a stumbling block to electing representatives or supporting policies that we believe in. That’s why we should make voter registration automatic.

With the technology that we use in our everyday lives, we can make registering to vote as simple and efficient as liking a friend’s post online.

The process is called automatic voter registration. It allows you to register when you first get, or when you renew, your driver’s license. The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will inform you that your information will be used to register you to vote unless you say you don’t want to. No one has to get registered to vote. In some states, you can even preregister to vote at the DMV when you’re 16 or 17, and then automatically become registered when you turn 18.

In 2016, Oregon became the first state in the nation to implement automatic voter registration. More than 390,000 new voters registered as a result. And in 2018, 62 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, up from 53 percent in 2014, the previous midterm election.

Registering to vote can be as simple as liking a friend’s online post.

Automatic voter registration is more efficient because your registration information is electronically transferred to election officials instead of being sent in paper form. Streamlining the process saves money, makes the voter rolls more accurate, and could add an additional 50 million voters to the rolls permanently across the country.

This is a nonpartisan policy that is popular in both red states and blue states. In the past five years, 16 states and the District of Columbia have approved using this approach to register eligible voters.

Young people are eager to get involved and have an impact. The government shouldn’t stand in the way with an outdated registration system that makes accessing the ballot more complicated than it needs to be. Automatic voter registration offers a new way forward that can open access to voting and improve American democracy for all.

—MYRNA PÉREZ

Brennan Center for Justice, New York University

Most public-spirited Americans agree that voter turnout rates are lower than they should be. But expanding automatic voter registration will do little to fix that.

About a third of states have in place some form of automatic voter registration. While some have seen an increase in the number of registered voters, evidence of a spike in turnout rates is modest at best, and that’s the measure that really matters.

The reason automatic voter registration won’t make a big impact is that it targets the wrong problem. The problem in the U.S. isn’t that there are too many barriers to casting a ballot. The main reason so many Americans don’t vote is that they think voting’s not important.

People should be willing to put up with some degree of inconvenience in order to exercise their right to vote. This is, after all, a right for which countless people have died throughout the centuries. And yet there are many who would wait an hour in line at the Apple store who would not wait 30 minutes outside the voting booth.

The problem isn’t that it’s too hard to vote; it’s that Americans think it’s not important.

We should think of registration as part of the act of voting. The act of voting derives its value from its being a free act: You vote because you want to or believe that it’s your duty. Similarly, there’s value in having to freely and deliberately join the voter rolls. When you’re registering to vote, you’re making plans to vote, perhaps even beginning to put some thought into who you’d like to vote for or why. Registering to vote is a way of setting down roots in a community and affirming your commitment to that community’s civic health.

We should investigate all serious allegations that someone has been wrongfully prevented from registering to vote or from casting a ballot, and all reports about incompetence on the part of election officials. But we’re thinking about civic participation the wrong way if we’re focused on formal barriers to voting instead of the barriers that lie within our beliefs, desires, and habits.

—STEPHEN EIDE