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Pennsylvania announced Tuesday that it has implemented automatic voter registration to ease the process of casting a ballot, joining 23 other states and the District of Columbia.
Residents who are eligible to vote and who obtain or renew a driver’s license or identification card at Pennsylvania’s Department of Motor Vehicles now will be guided through the voter registration process by default. If they don’t want to be added to the voter rolls, they have to actively opt out.
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The change fulfills a campaign promise for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), whose state is likely to be crucial to the 2024 presidential race. He promoted the new system Tuesday as a “common sense” step to make elections more secure and less costly for taxpayers.
“Look, this is common sense. You already provide proof of identity, residency, age and citizenship at the DMV — all the information you need to register to vote,” Shapiro said in a video posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
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Democratic incumbent Barack Obama won Pennsylvania in the presidential election in 2012, while Republican Donald Trump picked up the state in 2016. Joe Biden flipped Pennsylvania back to blue in 2020. In each case, the candidate who won Pennsylvania also won the election.
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About 8.7 million of the more than 10.3 million Pennsylvanians who are eligible to vote are registered. Closing gaps like that is a goal of the advocacy group When We All Vote, whose interim executive director Laura Miller said integrating voter registration with processes in which residents already engage — like renewing a driver’s license — increases the number of people who sign up.
Automatic voter registration particularly benefits young people heading to college and anyone else who moves and otherwise might forget to update their voter registration, Miller said.
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“Voter suppression is still something that is happening in states across the country,” she said, noting that people of color, people with disabilities and young people are particularly impacted. “So any way that we can improve access to the ballot box is a win.”
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U.S. residents have been able to register to vote at their state’s motor vehicles department since the implementation of a 1993 federal law that requires states to offer that option. The difference in jurisdictions with automatic voter registration is that eligible residents don’t have to go out of their way to opt in.
Oregon became the first state to enact automatic voter registration in 2015, and nearly two dozen states have followed. States with automatic voter registration are largely led by Democratic governors. Republicans in some GOP-controlled state legislatures have sought to tighten voting laws by requiring proof of identification when voting by mail and strengthening investigations of alleged election-related wrongdoing.
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Critics of automatic voter registration question whether a by-default process can adequately ensure that only people who are eligible can sign up to vote. Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, speculated Tuesday that Pennsylvania’s law would meet that pitfall.
“I can promise you, there will be no citizenship verification,” he wrote on X.
Although automatic registration tends to substantially increase registration rates, newly registered people are less likely to cast ballots, according to a California-based study published in 2021. The researchers wrote that the effects of automatic registration increase the longer the policy is in place.
In 2019, researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice found that automatic registration led to increases in registrants ranging from 9 percent to 94 percent in various states. The pattern held in states with different partisan makeups.
2024 presidential candidates Republican candidates are vying for the presidential nomination in a crowded field. Here’s who is running for president in 2024. Catch up on which candidates clashed and the winners and losers from the first GOP debate.
Republicans: Top contenders for the GOP 2024 nomination include former president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Republican presidential candidates for 2024.
Democrats: President Biden has officially announced he is running for reelection in 2024. Author Marianne Williamson and attorney Robert Kennedy Jr., both long-shot candidates, are also seeking the Democratic nomination. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Democratic presidential candidates for 2024.
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