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Election officials, experts, and policymakers agree: our voter registration system desperately needs an upgrade. The voting registration process we have today is a bureaucratic nightmare: costly, inefficient and unreliable, overwhelming election officials with needless paperwork and blocking millions of eligible Americans in every major election from exercising their fundamental right to vote.

Although these problems impact all Americans, overseas citizens and military service people, women (particularly single women), low-income citizens, seniors, people with disabilities and young voters and students are disproportionately affected.  In 2008, as many as three million registered voters did not cast a ballot in the General Election due to voter registration problems.

While Maine has some of the most inclusive voter access regulations in the nation, individuals still encounter problems fully accessing the process. Mainers have experienced problems with voter intimidation, rejected voter registration forms, and poorly organized voter registration drives by private organizations.

Providing adequate pathways to participation requires that voter registration be modernized so that underrepresented groups – like students and young voters – can fully participate in the political process.  For this reason, we support a comprehensive voter registration modernization initiative which would upgrade our aging infrastructures by building on the new systems recently put in place to create a uniform system that:

1) shifts the burden of registration from voters to the government and eliminates the need to rely on independent, third-party voter registration organizations to sign up voters;
2) incorporates permanent registration by allowing voters to update their registration when they move;
3) ensures that no eligible voter is turned away at the polls because her name was not added or was incorrectly taken off the list and
4) guards against fraud and abuse by eliminating the current paper based system that is unreliable and susceptible to mischief.

And, a more modern registration system will reduce administrative costs and improve efficiency. Currently, voting jurisdictions send more than half their voter registration budgets entering data, correcting handwriting errors and removing duplicate forms.  With state budgets in crisis, modernizing voter registration could save states and localities millions of dollars in material and labor costs and free up resources for other election needs.