Feb 05 2010
Automated is not Automatic
With the Illinois primary election now over (more or less) I will have a little more time to catch up with the various attempts out there to radically change our voter registration system. A recent one is from Demos. It continues to put forth misinformation about various registration systems and suggests that they are the same as the radical proposals put forth by groups such as the Committee to Modernize Voter Registration.
For example, the Demos project has this paragraph.
In the U.S., some states are beginning to experiment with automatic voter registration systems. Delaware is one state in the forefront of reform. As of 2009, data on individuals served by the state Department of Motor Vehicles are transmitted electronically to county election officials for voter registration and updating of voter records.
A casual reader, unfamiliar with the facts, might think that Delaware automatically registers people to vote. They don’t. Every voter in Delaware has the responsibility to affirmatively inform the voter registration agency that they want to be registered. Yes, in some instances when they do that, it is automated, but it is no way automatic.
The Demos report also contains this nugget.
Forty of the 41 states interviewed reported that citizenship status was a required field in their database for at least some of their public assistance programs.
The phrasing of this is remarkable. What it clearly says is that some number of these states have databases for public assistance programs that do not have a record of citizenship, and Demos is suggesting that those people be “automatically” registered to vote.
Just once, from Pew, or the Committee to Modernize, or any of the other groups asking for reform I’d like them to say. “We will never allow a database to be used for automatic registration if that database does not track citizenship.” They never have to my knowledge. If they have, I’d appreciate the citation. Instead, we get assurances that somehow it will all be worked out. Just trust them.
I would support more automation in the registration process as I’ve written about before. But an automatic process will be more costly, more prone to errors, and likely add millions of noncitizens to the voter registration rolls.
