On March 5, Oregon HB 2177 passed the legislature. See this story. The bill automatically registers everyone on the Oregon Motor Vehicles Department list who is at least age 18 and has indicated U.S. citizenship. No other state takes this approach, except that in a sense North Dakota has this policy, because in North Dakota there is no such thing as voter registration.
ALLEGIANCE chain from 4 July 1776 folks and later naturalized folks.
Place of birth means ZERO.
Too many legal history MORONS to count — esp. *politically correct* SCOTUS HACKS.
This should result in hundreds of thousands of Independents now being added to the Registration Rolls. It will eventually enable a surge of growth of the Independent Party in Oregon. The Independence Party may initially take a “liberal” bend, but once rank and file Independents see where that is going, I’d like to see the populist Independents take over and give the people a party they can call their own.
Motor Voter has been law for over 20 years. So how did 300,000 persons obtain driver’s licenses without being asked if they wanted to register to vote, or if they were asked, affirmatively declined.
Or if persons have had a driver’s license for 20+ years, and simply kept renewing it, but never voting, why are they going to start voting now?
How many so-called *functional illiterate* folks are there in each State / DC ???
Can they read STOP signs on the roads or merely understand the red color ???
One reason for the Party hack logos / symbols — so that illiterate voters could vote the straight party tickets.
See the many symbols and even candidate mini-pictures on ballots in nations with lots of illiterate voters — India, etc.
Experience in many states shows that the motor vehicles departments do a bad job of informing drivers license applicants about registering to vote there on the spot.
Richard,
How will the greatly increased number of voter registrants impact numbers of signatures needed for candidate or other types of petitions in Oregon? Increase the number needed?
Oregon has a weird system, where if you update your address on your driver’s license online, your voter registration address is not updated. But if you print out a form, and mail it in, then the voter registration address will be updated.
So they’re really trying to repair the problem in the current system.
This is why having a national ID card would help. People are more likely to not change their address on a national ID card than they are on a driver’s license, and much more likely than they are their address on their voter registration.
Many people are apparently under the belief that a change of address with the USPS will update all addresses associated with that person and address.
Good question. Fortunately Oregon does not determine petition requirements based on any percentage of the registered voters. Oregon uses the total vote cast in a past election for figuring out how many signatures are needed. There aren’t many states that use the total number of registered voters to determine petition requirements. Those that do use the number of registered voters are California, Delaware, D.C., Georgia, Kansas for independent candidates for district office, Maryland, North Carolina for district independents, and South Carolina for district independents.
The good news then is that this won’t increase turnout very much.
Obviously next –
FORCE the registered electors to vote – or else go to Jail — do NOT pass Go ???
One more step on the road to Civil WAR II —
communist Donkeys v. fascist Elephants.