The Committee to Modernize Voter Registration would like policy makers to believe that automatically updating voter registrations through government agencies will somehow miraculously make the voter rolls more accurate.  In truth, relying on the driver’s license is no panacea for clean voter files.

A study by the Center for Election Integrity at Cleveland State University estimates that in the State of Ohio hundreds of thousands of people would be disenfranchised by such a system.

The number of persons attempting to vote in November with a driver’s license ID with a former address is  approximately 511,000 using the midpoint of Method 1 estimates and approximately 406,000 using the  midpoint of Method 2 estimates. An average of these two independent methods is approximately 458,000. The number could also be as high as approximately 638,000 or as low as 325,000 given the data and  assumptions used in this analysis.

The study points out that many people wait a substantial amount of time to update their driver’s license after they move.   There are costs to the update the license and the hassle of going to the driver’s license facility.   Of course some number of people have neither an ID or driver’s license.

Presumably, in the whole context of “modernization”, these people will be able to still update their registrations.  But what then has been solved?  Election officials are still dealing with a large influx of registrations toward the end of the period.  Voters are still having to take action to get their registration updated.

Incredibly, what we’ll actually see is an increase in work.  A voter who moves and sends a notice to our office that they’ve moved will have a new address change processed.  Some number of months later, they’ll update their address at the driver’s license facility.  This duplicate registration will be sent to our office and reviewed.  Twice the work.

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