A new strategy to register voters got a first test last month, and the early results suggest it was a success.
Under a first-in-the-nation law that went into effect at the start of the year, Oregon automatically registered more than 225,000 residents based on interactions with the state’s department of motor vehicles, such as obtaining or renewing a driver’s license. Of those, nearly 100,000 voted last month, a turnout rate of 43 percent, more than half the 80 percent rate among all registered voters in the state.
“For Oregon to get that just among the people who are automatically registered is quite a feat,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of that school’s Elections Research Center.
