Almost a year ago I wrote about New York State’s progress on voting rights.[i] At that time the New York legislature passed a number of initiatives to make voting easier and available to all. Unfortunately at that time they did not pass a provision for automatic voter registration.
Well, that situation has been rectified. On December 22, 2020, Governor Cuomo signed into law the New York automatic voter registration act of 2020.[ii] [iii]
The new law requires certain New York State agencies, such as the DMV, the Departments of Health and Labor and some other social services offices at the county and city level, amend their forms for application for services to include a voter registration portion which will be filled out by the individual.
So, any time a person interacts with one of these agencies, their current information is collected for the Board of Elections. If the person is eligible and not registered, they are automatically registered. A choice to register with a political party, or not, is offered. Changes of address are noted and updated. The person may elect not to register if they so choose.
The Board of Elections is to set up the system to register anyone eligible that is not already registered.
There is a lot of work to be done by the various agencies to implement these changes, so the law is not to go into effect until January 1, 2023.
I had wondered how an automatic voter registration program would work. It is easy to say that every eligible person should be registered, but how to find all these people. This seems like a good system, identifying people when they interact with the state. The ones that most often are not registered are the vulnerable and isolated. These are the people that will likely seek services from the State and that will allow the State to know they exist and are eligible to vote.
[i] https://communities.nysba.org/blogs/hubert-g-plummer-esq/2019/01/21/new-york-moves-forward-on-voting-rights
[ii] https://nyassembly.gov/leg/?default_fld=&leg_video=&bn=A08280&term=&Summary=Y&Text=Y
[iii] https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/ny-state-of-politics/2020/12/22/cuomo-signs-automatic-voter-registration-measure, https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/new-york-elections-government/ny-automatic-voter-registration-dmv-state-ballots-20201222-gvhiqr57jvedrfhtpelsegrooy-story.html
The author[s] is solely responsible for this blog submission. It does not represent the position of the New York State Bar Association or its Committee.