Response to Arlene Violet’s June 13th critique of automatic voter registration

In the June 13th issue of the Valley Breeze, former Rhode Island Attorney General Arlene Violet presented an argument against the automatic voter registration legislation currently being considered by the General Assembly. Her appeal was riddled with inaccuracies that shows a lack of understanding of how we secure our voter rolls in the 21st century.

With automatic voter registration, eligible voters can automatically register to vote when they interact with a state agency, with rollout beginning at the Division of Motor Vehicles. They also have the opportunity to decline to register. This process is a surefire way to make our elections more modern, safe and secure.

It also is important to note that under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, state agencies already serve as voter registration sites — automatic voter registration modernizes this system with technology. In addition to public service agencies, Armed Forces Recruitment offices currently serve as voter registration sites and offices that provide hunting and fishing licenses may serve as voter registration sites under RI General Law 17–9.1- 8.

Improving our elections should be something that we all get behind, whether we vote Republican, Democrat or Independent. In decrying the supposed partisanship of the automatic voter registration bill, Violet ends up making her own partisan appeal.

The bill had unanimous support in the House of Representatives with a 74–0 vote last week, contrary to Violet’s claims that the vote split on partisan lines. The only partisan vote was on a failed amendment. It is expected to have bipartisan appeal in the Senate as well.

The bipartisanship of automatic voter registration is not just contained to Rhode Island. In Illinois, automatic voter registration passed through both chambers of their state legislature with overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle. Their Republican Governor, Bruce Rauner, has indicated that he will sign the bill.

There are already eight states, plus the District of Columbia, that are implementing automatic voter registration, including the reliably red states of Alaska and West Virginia.

Violet incorrectly assumes that automatic voter registration only benefits people that receive public assistance.

Researchers have analyzed the registrant demographics out of Oregon Motor Voter, Oregon’s first-in-the-nation automatic voter registration system. They found that the legislation helped the state’s electorate to be more representative of the state’s population as a whole because people who automatically registered were younger, lower-income, more rural and more ethnically diverse.

Especially with rural voters, who overwhelmingly supported Trump in this past election, no one can say that automatic voter registration only aided Democrats.

Violet expressed concerns about people who are ineligible to vote having access to the ballot. I share her concern, which is why I support automatic voter registration. Through a secure transfer of data, our boards of canvassers only receive registration files for eligible citizens. They then verify every record to ensure that each voter meets our requirements.

Automatic voter registration imposes exactly the vetting process that we need.

It also helps to clean up our voter rolls and ensures that we have the most accurate information possible on file. Violet is correct to note that there are inaccuracies on our voter rolls. But contrary to her claim that they are ineligible individuals, many of these records are eligible people who moved from one community to another within Rhode Island and don’t think to update the address on their voter registration. Automatic voter registration would automatically update these addresses, beginning at the DMV, which will reduce incorrect addresses and voter confusion on Election Day. We expect that this will improve the accuracy of our state’s voter rolls.

Our state officials take the need for security of our voter rolls seriously, which is why automatic voter registration will only be implemented at the Division of Motor Vehicles to start. It will expand to other agencies only when they have met rigorous standards to ensure they can verify voter eligibility requirements. The DMV has had a secure electronic connection with the Secretary of State’s office to process voter registrations for well over a decade.

Lastly, I am concerned with Violet’s description of what took place during our elections last November. For years, I have served as a nonpartisan watchdog to make sure that no ballots are illegally tampered with or otherwise compromised. We had some challenges with the new voting machines last November, but that does not mean ballots were illegally handled. For one, the ballots from Speaker Nick Mattiello’s race that were delivered late to the Board of Elections had been in a sealed ballot box in a locked safe at Cranston City Hall without potential for tampering.

Perhaps more disturbing are her claims that the Board of Elections was making up votes. Our state officials take elections seriously, which is why they have a longstanding public process of remaking damaged ballots. They examine mail ballots that cannot be run through the scanners because they were damaged in mail delivery. In a public process under the eye of a bipartisan board, officials make a duplicate of the ballot to run through the machine. Every eligible voter that wants to participate in our elections should have their vote counted. Far from making up votes, our Board of Elections was making sure that every eligible vote cast was counted.

We deserve to have a safe, secure and efficient voter registration system in Rhode Island. I am confident that the automatic voter registration measure that passed the House last week is exactly what our state needs to make our elections more efficient and secure, while protecting the right of eligible voters to participate.

If Arlene Violet took election security as seriously as national Republicans like Governor Rauner and Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, she would join them in support of automatic voter registration.