National: From Carter To California: Automatic Registration Is The New Endgame For Elections | Huffington Post

President Jimmy Carter took office in 1977 with the conviction that it should be easier for citizens to register to vote. To accomplish that goal, he wrote to Democratic secretaries of state that year urging them to support legislation that would allow voters to register on Election Day. “The continuing decline in American voter participation is a serious problem which calls for the attention of all of us in public life,” Carter wrote. Advisers to Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale had concluded that Election Day registration, which they called “universal registration,” would boost low turnout rates. They cited laws passed in Minnesota and Wisconsin after the 1972 election that allowed citizens to register at the polls, which placed both states in the top five for highest turnout in 1976. But tucked away in their correspondence about the election reform proposals was an acknowledgment that the United States’ neighbor to the north had made it even easier for citizens to vote, by registering them automatically with government data.

Editorials: How Jimmy Carter Pioneered Electoral Reform | Rick Perlstein/Washington Spectator

James Earl Carter is nearing the end. In an extraordinary press conference last week, the 39th president discussed his impending death from metastasizing liver cancer, with a grace, humor, and wisdom the rest of us can only hope to emulate when our own time comes. Soon will come the eulogies: then, the assessments. Forgive me if I jump the gun with a gust of affection. I’ve been grappling with his 1976 candidacy and presidency for most of my workdays for at least a year now for my next book on Ronald Reagan’s rise to the presidency. I want to loose some thoughts while they are fresh in my mind. … President Carter, concerned that America ranked 21st in voter participation among the world’s democracies, transmitted a package of proposed electoral reforms to Congress. He had studied the problem. Now he was ready to administer a solution. Everyone loved to talk about voter apathy, but the real problem, Carter said, was that “millions of Americans are prevented or discouraged from voting in every election by antiquated and overly restricted voter registration laws”—a fact proven, he pointed out, by record rates of participation in 1976 in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, where voters were allowed to register on election day. So he proposed that election-day registration be adopted universally, tempering concerns that such measures might increase opportunities for fraud by also proposing five years in prison and a $10,000 fine as penalties for electoral fraud.

National: Voting Rights Group Pushes Automatic Registration As 2016 Issue | Huffington Post

Automatic voter registration has become a zeitgeisty election reform for Democrats, since Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) signed the state’s first-in-the-nation measure into law and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton advocated for the method. Now, a voting rights group is making the proposal the centerpiece of its 2016 effort. The group, called iVote, will announce Monday that it will focus its efforts on creating campaigns to enact automatic voter registration laws in multiple states across the country, including swing states crucial to next year’s presidential election. The group plans to spend six to seven figures on the campaign. “We should be looking for ways to make it easier to vote and increase participation, not more burdensome to vote and suppress participation,” said Ellen Kurz, iVote’s founder and president. “Automatic voter registration will be a monumental step in guaranteeing more voters have their voices heard on Election Day.”

Oregon: Bill would make voter registration automatic | HeraldNet

Oregon’s chief elections official wants almost everyone with a driver’s license to be automatically registered to vote. The plan, proposed by Democratic Secretary of State Kate Brown, would significantly redesign Oregon’s voter-registration practices and potentially add hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters to the state. Combined with Oregon’s all-mail elections, the bill would mean that most adult state residents would automatically get a ballot in their mailbox. Republicans have reacted with caution, saying they’re concerned about the potential for fraud. The House Rules Committee heard public testimony on Brown’s proposal Wednesday but did not decide whether to advance it.

Oregon: Secretary of State tweaks universal registration bill in search of more support | OregonLive

Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown on Wednesday pitched legislators on a new version of her ambitious plan to automatically register hundreds of thousands of potential voters in the state. Brown said she has agreed to changes to address privacy concerns, as well as worries from minor political parties faced with rapidly increasing their numbers to keep their ballot status. Brown’s changes, now embodied in House Bill 3521, didn’t satisfy Republicans, several of whom showed up to testify against the measure.  However, the Democratic secretary of state did get backing from several groups that seek to increase voter registration, such as the Oregon League of Women Voters and Common Cause Oregon.

National: U.S. Should Consider Automatic Voter Registration: Holder | Bloomberg

The U.S. should consider automatically registering eligible voters and extending voting hours to counter the November election’s long lines and administrative hurdles, Attorney General Eric Holder said. Holder, speaking today at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, proposed expanding access for voters and overhauling a registration system he called “antiquated.” “It is important for national leaders, academic experts, and members of the public to engage in a frank, thorough and inclusive discussion about how our election systems can be made stronger and more accessible,” Holder said in prepared remarks.

National: U.S. should automatically register voters: attorney general | Reuters

Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday that U.S. election officials should register eligible voters automatically and take steps to reduce the long lines Americans encountered in national elections on November 6. In a speech in Boston, Holder became the highest-ranking official to call for voting changes since President Barack Obama expressed exasperation with the hours-long lines during his re-election victory speech last night. “Modern technology provides ways to address many of the problems that impede the efficient administration of elections,” Holder said.

National: Justice Department official: Register voters automatically | Huffington Post

One of the top enforcers of the nation’s civil rights laws said Friday government should be responsible for automatically registering citizens to vote by using existing databases to compile lists of all eligible residents in each jurisdiction. The proposal by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, follows an election with breakdowns that forced voters in many states to wait in line for hours. In remarks at George Washington University law school, Perez said census data shows that of 75 million adult citizens who failed to vote in the 2008 presidential election, 60 million were not registered and therefore ineligible to cast a ballot. Perez says one of the biggest barriers to voting in this country is an antiquated registration system.