On Politics: Amid voter-restriction moves elsewhere, automatic voter registration here worth support

Registering to vote, step one in a simple act of good citizenship, is now part of the battleground that is the Democrat-Republican national split. Hawaii has joined the fight.

If approved by the state Legislature and Gov. David Ige, Hawaii would become the 21st state to approve automatic voter registration (AVR).

The action would come on the heels of a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice showing Republican lawmakers in 28 states are pushing legislation that would restrict voting. Instead of encouraging voting, the GOP plans ways to make it harder to vote.

According to a National Public Radio report, the bills would limit voting by mail, add new voter ID requirements, make it more difficult to register voters and give states greater leeway to purge voter files. Some Republican state lawmakers are proposing a wave of new voting laws that would effectively make it more difficult to vote in future elections, the report says.

This comes after the largely discredited protests by former President Donald Trump, who to this day, claims, without evidence, that the election was stolen from him. Voter registration and mail-in ballots are two of Trump’s and the GOP’s most vaporous bogeymen.

The pending Hawaii legislation for AVR is simple and makes a lot of sense.

It would include voter registration automatically in the documents you sign when you first apply for a Hawaii driver’s license. Applicants would have to provide evidence that they are who they say they are, just as they do now, but would also have to say they are eligible to vote and would then be automatically registered to vote if 18 or older. Applicants would have to actively say they didn’t want to register to vote in order to opt out.

Scott Nago, state chief elections officer, said in testimony last week: “This bill also ensures the accuracy of the voter registration rolls by electronically transmitting voter registration data between the driver licensing and identification card database and the statewide voter registration system.”

Remember those long lines on election day last year? This automatic registration option would fix much of the problem, with everyone automatically becoming a voter, so no need for last-minute registration.

Senate Bill 159 received wide support from good government groups, local labor unions and other government action groups.

“We must make sure that we provide access to democracy for groups who struggle to find time to engage with the process. We lose out as a society when simple technical barriers keep people from participating,” testified Will Caron, president of the Young Progressives Demanding Action group.

On a national level, legislation is moving that would require mandatory automatic voter registration in all states.

Although Hawaii is a bit late to the automatic voter registration effort, it is worthy of support and adds a more streamlined and frictionless look to Hawaii’s voting system.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.