While we’re still waiting on the California Assembly to complete passage of universal (automatic) voter registration and send the bill to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature, both the New York Times and the Washington Post editorial boards weighed in this week in support of a expanding universal voter registration to all states.
The Times writes, Entwining Two Rights in California: Voting and Driving:
For all the early excitement stirred by the presidential primary contests, a greater test of democracy than the candidates’ cut-and-thrust will be voter participation, a vital statistic which dropped from 62.3 percent in 2008 to 57.5 percent in the last presidential election. In part because of a welter of obstructionist state laws, more than 90 million Americans did not bother or care to vote in 2012.
The Democratic-majority Legislature in California, the most populous state, has just taken a major step toward resisting this alarming trend by approving a system of automatic voter registration for any citizen who obtains or updates a California driver’s license. Modeled on Oregon’s excellent “motor-voter” program, the new system cannot help but increase democratic participation.