Americans are required to register if they want to vote; as of this week, Oregonians will have to register not to. In front of a packed and cheering audience Monday, Gov. Kate Brown signed a first-in-the-nation bill to automatically register all eligible Oregonians to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license or state identification card. Those who are registered through the new process will be notified by mail and will be given three weeks to take themselves off the voting rolls. If they do not opt out, the secretary of state’s office will mail them a ballot automatically 20 days before any election. When Brown signed House Bill 2177 into law, she was building on the Beaver State’s history as a ballot-box innovator, which has led to high voter participation. Oregon was the first state in the country to switch to all-mail voting when Ballot Measure 60 was passed in 1998 by a wide margin. Washington state and Colorado later followed suit.
Unlike many states, Oregon has been actively engaged in trying to make it as easy and convenient as possible for voters to exercise their franchise. In stark contrast with so many red states heavily invested in suppressing traditionally Democratic-leaning constituencies- minorities, the poor, college students- Oregon WANTS people to vote in large numbers. We were the first state to introduce voting by mail, and there are no longer traditional polling places in the state on Election Day. If you haven’t mailed your ballot prior to Election Day, you can drop it off at a public library or county elections office. It’s easy, it’s secure, and it respects the rights of citizens to exercise their franchise- more than can be said of many red states these days.
Oh…and it turns out voting by mail does great things for voter turnout. Go figure.
Oregon’s latest electoral innovation is so thoroughly steeped in common sense that it’s difficult to understand why it hasn’t been done sooner. I’ve never understood why a citizen must register to vote. If you’re 18 or over and have a state-issued driver’s license or ID card, the state already has your information on record. Why should a voter need to register? Why create a needless hoop a citizen must jump through in order to be granted leave to exercise their constitutionally-guaranteed franchise?
Unless, of course, you’re trying to keep people from voting (Et tu, North Carolina?)….
“This bill is about making government work better, treating citizens as customers and giving them access to the service they expect,” she said Monday. “When someone moves to Oregon, why should they have to fill out multiple forms for multiple agencies? They should be able to complete one form, one time.”
Currently, there are about 2.2 million registered voters in Oregon, said Tony Green, spokesman for Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins, and an additional 800,000 are not registered but eligible. The new law is expected to bring nearly half of those onto the voter rolls.
That sound you just heard was millions of Republicans slapping their forehead in the realization that their goal of keeping as many Democratic-leaning voters away from the ballot box as possible just became that much more difficult.
Myrna Perez, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Project at the Brennan Center for Justice, called Oregon’s new law “a groundbreaking innovation.”
“Oregon takes it further than any other state by putting the burden on the government,” said Perez, whose organization is part of New York University School of Law. “Instead of asking voters, ‘Do you want to register to vote?’ they ask voters, ‘Do you not want to vote?’”
OK, so the State of Oregon thoroughly boogered up our Obamacare health insurance exchange. It’s not as if we here in the Beaver State live in some sort of governmental Shangri-La where never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. Still, Gov. Brown has done yeoman’s work, dating back to her time as Secretary of State, in making government more customer service oriented. That her attitude is so rare in government is part of the problem. Government should exist to SERVE citizens, NOT to complicate their lives.
Why shouldn’t a new arrival in Oregon “be able to complete one form, one time” and be registered to vote? If government exists to serve the people, then why shouldn’t it do so by making things as easy, simple, and transparent as possible? We haven’t had to leave our living rooms to vote since 1998; now Oregonians no longer even have to worry about registering.
Take that, North Carolina….
