Gov. Eddie Calvo enacted several bills into law yesterday including legislation updates, prison contraband regulations and reforms to Guam’s voter registration laws. … In her first act as an island lawmaker, freshman Sen. Mary Camacho Torres, R-Santa Rita, authored three voter registration reform bills aimed at modernizing and streamlining the process. Two of the measures — Bills 23 and 24 — were deliberated and passed during the March session, but she agreed to send Bill 25 back to committee. “We’ve seen that democracy is so dependent on participation,” Torres said. “There’s a steady decline of participation in the voting process, we felt incumbent to do something to enable people to have better access to online voter registration.”
Bill 23 requires the Guam Election Commission to create an online registration portal on their website. The portal allows Guamanians to register to vote as well as register for the Decolonization Registry.
The new law also removed the proof of citizenship requirement from Guam’s voter registration law, so only a driver’s license number, Guam identification card number or the last four digits of a person’s social security number is needed to register.
Bill 24 allows 16-year-olds to pre-register to vote. “Particularly with Bill 24, we hope that this will give impetus and stimulation for our young people registering at 16, getting more involved in the political process,” Calvo said.
Full Article: Calvo signs prison, voter bills into law | Pacific Daily News | guampdn.com.