Bill would change voter registration from opt-in to opt-out

By DUSTY CHRISTENSEN

@dustyc123

Published: 07-03-2017 11:49 PM

NORTHAMPTON — A bill making its way through the state Legislature would create an automatic voter registration system in the state, changing the current opt-in format to an opt-out system.

State Rep. Peter Kocot, D-Northampton, has presented the bill in the House, together with more than 80 co-sponsors. The law, if passed, would enable the automatic registration of eligible citizens — unless otherwise specified — when they come in contact with state agencies that register voters, like the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

In Massachusetts, some 700,000 eligible citizens are not registered to vote — nearly 15 percent of those eligible to cast a ballot, according to the government accountability organization Common Cause Massachusetts.

“Many of these people are young folks, people of color, the elderly,” Kocot said. “Nothing should stand in the way of a resident of Massachusetts from having their voice heard and their vote counted, and we want to make sure everybody has an equal right to participate in the npolitical process, that it’s accurate and transparent.”

Other states with Democratic majorities have passed similar legislation, including neighboring Vermont and Connecticut.

Similar efforts have stalled in places like New Jersey, however, where Republican Gov. Chris Christie vetoed an automatic voter registration proposal, calling it ill-advised and expensive. West Virginia’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed an automatic registration bill in 2016, but it was combined with a voter-ID law before Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin signed it into law.

Kocot hit back at the notion that the bill would be costly. He said the current registration process costs $3.54 per person compared to just 3 cents for automatic registration. Money to set up the system is also already in place in the form of segregated funds that the federal government gave states to enhance voting systems, Kocot said.

“That funding is already there, and the secretary of state can use those funds,” he said. “It’s not going to be any additional funding from the taxpayers.”

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There does seem to be a clear partisan divide, however, over efforts to expand the vote with systems like automatic voter enrollment.

Fifty-nine percent of all Americans agreed with the statement “everything possible should be done to make it easy for every citizen to vote” in a recent Pew Research Center poll, but only 35 percent of Republicans agreed with that statement compared with 84 percent of Democrats.

Kocot, though, stressed that his bill has bipartisan support, which he said was essential to passing the law.

“It helps every legislative district, no matter what the makeup is, to register new voters,” Kocot said.

The push for automatic voter registration in Massachusetts also comes amid a partisan struggle nationwide over issues like voter ID laws, voter registration deadlines and a recently created Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

On Wednesday, Suffolk Superior Court will hear a lawsuit brought by the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging a state law that imposes a deadline for new voters to register — 20 days before an election.

Last week, Massachusetts’ top election official, Secretary of State William Galvin, joined a vast majority of the country’s states in refusing to send detailed voter data to the Trump administration’s election commission.

The body has drawn criticism from election officials and Democratic lawmakers, who say that there is little evidence of voter fraud in the United States, and that commission Vice Chairman Kris Kobach has a long history of trying to disenfranchise voters in his role as secretary of state in Kansas.

Under Kocot’s bill, Massachusetts would also join the Electronic Registration Information Center, a national database developed by the Pew Charitable Trusts that uses advanced algorithms to find inaccuracies in states’ voter rolls so ineligible citizens can be removed after confirming the removal with the state and voter. The center also determines if an eligible voter is not registered, so that they can be sent registration forms.

Kocot said that the Legislature held hearings on the bill last month, and that most of the comments were in support of the law.

“At this time in our nation’s history, personally I feel it’s now more important than ever that nobody is sitting on the sidelines,” Kocot said of expanding the vote. “We’re going to give it a good push this fall, and we hope to pass it during this legislative session.”

Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.

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