Officials hope online registration will attract more voters
The new system will use data from the DMV to give residents the option of using their computer
By David Steves
The Register-Guard
SALEM — Starting Monday, Oregonians can dispense with the paperwork and go online to register as new voters or update their current voter status.
The state Elections Division’s launch of the new system means Oregon is the fourth state to give residents the option of registering as voters online. Three other states will follow suit this year and two more are developing their procedures.
Secretary of State Kate Brown, who is overseeing the online registration program, said the new system should help reduce barriers to voting and increase participation in elections.
“Making it simpler and more efficient to register to vote is a strategy to do that,” she said.
The state will keep in place all its current options for people who want to register or update their voter information. They include picking up forms at various public offices or filling out a form online and printing it out. Either way, the forms must be delivered by hand or mail to state or county elections offices.
Don Hamilton, an Elections Division spokesman, said the new system will give people the option of submitting the information over the Internet for the first time. It’s available to anyone who is in the state Driver and Motor Vehicle Services system — either because they have a driver’s license, a DMV-issued identification card or a learner’s permit. That’s necessary because it allows the Elections Division to verify voter signatures, which are on file with the DMV.
Hamilton said it takes less than five minutes to fill out the online form required to register as a voter or for current voters to update their party affiliation or address.
A training session Thursday on the new system drew about three dozen people, mostly from political parties and political activism organizations. One participant, Henry Kraemer from the Bus Project, said he hoped it would make it easier for people to become voters.
“This platform is going to open it up to a lot of young folks who are harder to get to otherwise,” said Kraemer, the activist group’s political director. “In other states we’ve seen that it’s increased registration by thousands of people.”
Washington Bus, a sister organization in Oregon’s northern neighbor, has a link to its state’s online voter registration system on its own Web site, but continues to reach out to potential voters in person at festivals, campuses and other events. Kraemer said the Oregon Bus Project will do the same.
The 2009 Legislature authorized Oregon’s online voter-registration system. Hamilton said it would save elections offices staff time because they will no longer need to input information from those who register through the Internet.
The state’s launch of its online voter registration system isn’t the only development to advance the role of the Internet in allowing Oregonians to get involved with the political process. A conservative political organization, Common Sense for Oregon, plans to announce today what its news release called “a new electronic initiative and referendum petition system, including a first-of-its-kind electronic petition kiosk system.”
The 2007 Legislature approved the use of electronic petitions. They were used in last year’s signature drive to place Measures 66 and 67 on the January ballot.
Unlike the state’s voter registration system, these “E-petitions” must be printed out, signed with what elections officials call a “wet signature” and turned in to the state Elections division in paper format.
Ross Day, the founder of Common Sense for Oregon, said his group had two innovations it hoped to ramp up the role of electronic petitions. One is to e-mail to potential supporters of its causes petition sheets that are “postage paid” and another is the completion of the first touch-screen kiosks. The prototype will be on display at today’s news conference in Beaverton and again at next month’s Dorchester Conference that Republicans hold annually in Seaside.
Day said he hopes that 12 such kiosks will be placed in businesses where customers can print and sign petitions and place them in a nearby dropbox.
“The biggest challenge is going to be the same as for voter registration: it’s new and people may not trust it at first,” he said.
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