The Governor’s budget proposes that the Division of Motor Vehicles
become more efficient by increasing their online services. Another
division of state government should do the same, according to Paul
Malischke, spokesperson for Fair Elections Wisconsin.

“The Government Accountability Board should improve the voter
registration system by offering online voter registration. The direct
financial payback for municipalities would be immediate, by saving the
cost of manual data entry from a huge stack of paper forms,” Malischke
said.

Benefits for Voters:

Voters would benefit from a more timely, accessible and reliable way
to register, with immediate confirmation that the registration was
accepted. This eliminates worries about being told at the polls, “You
are not on the list”—a frequent consequence of paper forms that are
entered late, or with errors.

Follow the successful model of other states
Arizona and Washington have successfully instituted online voter
registration by partially integrating it with the driver’s license
system. Arizona’s system has been in place since 2002, and in 2008,
60% of those who registered used the online system. Washington’s
system has been in effect for a year, and is highly acclaimed by their
Secretary of State. California has passed enabling legislation to have
an online system. In order to maintain the integrity of the voter
list, there are these limitations:

• Only those with a driver’s license or state identification card can
use the online system.

• Online registration closes when open registration closes. In
Wisconsin this is 20 days before the election.

HAVA checks
In 2008, Wisconsin had a well-publicized battle on how to handle “HAVA
checks”, the comparison of
voter registrations to the driver’s license database. In contrast,
states that have online registration handle this automatically as part
of the process. No extra effort is needed by the voter or the election
administrator for the matching process, and controversy is minimized.

Benefits for election administrators:

The data submitted online is more complete and accurate than on paper
forms. Online registration
significantly reduces the costly and heavy workload of entering data
from paper forms, most of which are received when other election tasks
are mounting. Last fall, clerks struggled to process forms in time to
get voters on the poll list. If the bulk of registrations are handled
automatically, our election administrators will be able to deal
promptly with the paper forms from other voters.

Next Step:

In order for Wisconsin to put an online system into place by next
year, the Wisconsin budget should include this. The Government
Accountability Board and the Department of Transportation should work
together on implementation.

 

Paul Malischke is a spokesperson for Fair Elections Wisconsin:
[email protected] phone 608-238-8976 February 26, 2009