Recently the “motor voter” laws were made easier in Oregon with a bold new 21st century standard for voter registration. Oregon’s state legislature approved a bill to streamline registration at the DMV by replacing a paper-based system with a new process in which voters are added to the rolls electronically. Now, Oregon will make that option “opt-out.” This means citizens will be automatically registered to vote.
The new law has been heralded by organizations such as the Brennan Center as a way to harness modern technology to make the voting process more convenient and accessible.
“This legislation is an important paradigm shift on voter registration,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center. It is believed that through this new streamlined process hundreds of thousands of eligible voters will be added to the rolls in its first year, cutting the rate of unregistered citizens in half. This change is expected to initially add between 300,000 and 400,000 eligible voters to the registration rolls by 2016, and even more in subsequent election cycles—giving Oregon potentially the highest voter registration rate in the U.S.
