Pennsylvania desires to make it simpler to register to vote when drivers get or renew a license

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration mentioned beginning Tuesday it’s making it simpler for somebody to register to vote when they’re getting or renewing a driver’s license in Pennsylvania.

Beneath the brand new format, prompts on the pc screens in driver’s license facilities will take the person to a template to register to vote. That leaves it as much as them to decide on to not register. Beforehand, prompts on the pc display first requested the person whether or not they wished to register to vote.

Twenty-three different states and Washington, D.C., have already got various fashions of what’s known as “automated voter registration,” in line with the Nationwide Convention of State Legislatures.

The Shapiro administration mentioned it doesn’t want laws or regulation to make the change at driver’s license facilities.

There are at present 8.6 million registered voters in Pennsylvania, in line with info from the state Division of State. Greater than 10 million Pennsylvanians out of 13 million complete are at the least 18 years outdated, the minimal authorized age to vote, in line with U.S. Census figures.

States have been required to supply voter registration at driver’s license facilities since Congress handed the Nationwide Voter Registration Act in 1993.

Researchers from the Public Coverage Institute of California, the College of Southern California and the College of California-Berkeley concluded in a 2021 research that automated voter registration elevated registration by a number of proportion factors in states the place it was in impact, and boosted the variety of individuals really voting by greater than 1%.