Virginia’s online voter registration portal went live this week providing many residents the opportunity to register to vote online as well as update their existing voter registration online.
Last March, Governor Bob McDonnell signed House Bill No. 2341, allowing Virginia residents with a state driver’s license or DMV-issued identification card to electronically submit voter registration applications though the State Board of Elections’ here. H.B. 2341 received overwhelming support in both chambers of the legislature, with a combined Senate and House vote of 133-5.
Throughout the United States, online voter registration has received praise from both Democrats and Republicans. Currently, online voter registration services are offered in both red and blue states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. In addition, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, and West Virginia have enacted online registration but have not yet implemented it.
Virginia’s online voter registration law marks a significant improvement from the state’s over-reliance on an outdated paper registration system. Online voter registration simplifies the voting registration process; increases accurate data entry by voters and election officials; and reduces government expenditures.
First, online voter registration provides for a convenient way to register. Many voters prefer online registration because approximately 76 percent of Americans have access to the Internet in their households. Online voter registration is particularly attractive to young voters. For example, in California, individuals under the age of 25 constituted 30% of voters who registered online.
Second, online voting will reduce data entry errors caused by the applicant’s handwriting or by election officials’ clerical mistakes in entering data. Donald Palmer, Virginia’s State Elections Secretary, remarked last week, “a lot of information that’s provided in paper is sometimes indecipherable . . . .” By implementing online voter registration, state election officials will be able to maintain more accurate voting rolls because they will not need to decipher applicants’ handwriting.
Third, online voter registration reduces government expenditures because the state will not need to print and manually enter data from paper voter registration forms.
For example, in Arizona, processing an online voter registration form costs the state as little as $.03, whereas processing a paper voter registration form costs the state $.83. As one Arizona election official noted, the state reduced its printing cost by 83% after implementing online voter registration.
Despite this positive election reform, there are potential concerns regarding Virginia’s online voter registration. One drawback of Virginia’s new law is that individuals without licenses or identification cards must still print, sign, and mail the form, or else obtain the paper form at a voter registration agency. Approximately 11 percent of eligible voters in America do not possess a driver’s license or identification card. A disproportionate number of those individuals are low-income individuals and individuals with disabilities. These are the very people who Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act was designed to protect, and who our Public Agency Registration Project tries to help. By requiring that online registrants have a license or identification card, Virginia only further leaves behind these historically underrepresented voters. Virginia should therefore enact legislation that will engage disenfranchised voters and further reduce barriers to voting, including but not limited to voter registration modernization.
For more information about online voter registration, check out our new policy paper, written by Michelle Kanter Cohen.
Leela Baggett is a rising second-year law student at the George Washington University Law School. She joins Project Vote as legal intern for summer 2013.