The ongoing battle continues against the anti-American and corrupt efforts by Rethuglicans to choose their voters through gerrymandering, restrictions on polling places in Democratic precincts, and voter ID laws discriminating against their opponents. However, there's a growing movement for states to adopt automatic voter registration (AVR) to make it easier for people to register to vote, a movement that's understandably opposed by Rethuglicans since higher turnout means Dems usually win.
Nathaniel Rekich writes in FiveThirtyEight that AVR (a centerpiece in the House-passed and Senate-blocked H.R. 1 this year) would register eligible citizens when they first interact with a state government agency, for example the motor vehicle department. That doesn't guarantee that those registered to vote will actually turn up a the polls, but FiveThirtyEight found from data collected from eight states that adopted AVR in time for the 2018 midterms:
"Our analysis shows that people who were registered through AVR do vote — but not necessarily at the same rate as those who register themselves. Let’s run through the numbers:
From the day they first implemented AVR through their 2018 voter-registration deadline, those eight places automatically registered around 2.2 million new voters. (Although, as we’ll talk about in a minute, some of those voters surely would have registered without AVR.)
As many as 6 million existing voters who interacted with a government agency had their voter registrations automatically updated — for example, by replacing an outdated address.
In the four jurisdictions that reported turnout among the newly registered voters, between 42 percent and 54 percent of them cast a ballot in 2018. Voters who registered through a means other than AVR turned out at rates between 46 percent and 76 percent in these places, though some of these people did have their registrations updated through AVR." (our emphasis)As the article indicates, AVR isn't the cure for low voter turnout, but it makes the first step in exercising your right to vote painless and automatic. Coupled with effective voter turnout drives, that can make a big difference going forward as Rethugs are doing everything in their power to distort the electoral playing field.
