Oregon may soon begin what is arguably the most innovative, progressive voting effort in the nation: automatic voter registration.

Secretary of State Kate Brown (D) is leading a new effort — the first of its kind in the nation — to make registration as simple as possible in the Beaver State. Currently, voting for nearly every American is a two-step process: one must register to vote before actually voting. Automatically registering voters would streamline the matter, preventing many Oregonians who forgot or were unable to register to still cast a ballot.

Governing has more on how Brown’s idea would work:

Brown’s plan, introduced in the state House last month, would allow Oregon to automatically register new voters at the time they apply for a driver’s license. Those new voters would initially be registered as unaffiliated with any political party. At a later date, they’d receive a postcard by mail allowing them to choose a party affiliation or opt out of voter registration altogether, should they desire. The state’s House Rules Committee held a hearing on the legislation last month, and Brown expects another one in the coming weeks.

In some states, the DMV asks people applying for driver’s licenses if they want to register to vote. If they say yes, they fill out a form on the spot indicating that choice, and they get registered. But the Oregon plan is different. About 500,000 eligible voters who aren’t registered — but are already in the DMV database — would automatically become registered in a process that would begin Jan. 1, 2014. Residents would automatically get registered when they get new driver’s licenses, and their voter registration would be updated when they update or renew those licenses.

Under current Oregon law, residents must register (or update their registration) at least 25 days before the election or be shut out of the political process. Deadlines like these and other associated hurdles can prevent many people from registering to vote. There are currently more than 600,000 Oregonians who are eligible to vote but have not registered.

Though voting rights advocates like the League of Women Voters of Oregon laud Brown’s idea, Republicans are skeptical that it should be easier to vote. Oregon Republican Party executive director Greg Leo said that making registration easier would lead to a less-informed electorate. “We make it so easy for people to participate that I worry they won’t take the time to be an informed voter and to really study the issues,” Leo said.

Oregon has a history of innovation on voting rights. In 1998, it became the first state to move to a vote-by-mail system; the state of Washington has since followed their lead.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)

The latest conservative outrage is over a story in the Washington Examiner about how new Obamacare forms will ask citizens if they would like to register to vote:

The 61-page online Obamacare draft application for health care includes asking if the applicant wants to register to vote, raising the specter that pro-Obama groups being tapped to help Americans sign up for the program will also steer them to register with the Democratic Party.

On page 59, after numerous questions about the applicant’s identity and qualification for Obamacare, comes the question: “Would you like to register to vote?” The placement of the question could lead some to believe they have to register to vote to get health care.

The story has since been picked up by the Daily Caller, Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA), and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the number two Senate Republican, who tweeted, “How convenient! Register to vote while applying for Obamacare.”

It’s not only convenient; it’s also required by law.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as “Motor Voter,” requires public agencies that provide public assistance to offer voter registration opportunities. Nowhere are citizens told who to vote for, which party to register for, or even that they have to register at all.

Even if it weren’t legally required, do Republicans think it’s problematic to ask people if they’re registered to vote? A “founding father” of the modern conservative movement, Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and Moral Majority, did actually argue in 1980 that “I don’t want everybody to vote.” In fact, he reasoned, “our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Are Republicans again trying to prevent more people from being registered to vote?

Over the past two years, GOP lawmakers have indeed worked in earnest to pass new voter suppression laws around the country, making it more difficult for minorities in particular to register to vote. The fact that they would object to federal forms complying with federal law because it might result in more people registered to vote falls squarely in line with the GOP’s recent trend on voting rights.

When Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) announced he would no longer support his own plan to do away with same day voter registration in Wisconsin, he struck a blow to voter suppression and may have saved millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.

A new report from the Government Accountability Board suggests that ending the state’s same day voter registration program, which allows eligible voters to register to vote at the polling station on election day, would cost several state agencies a combined $14.5 million:

The staff of the GAB, which oversees the state’s elections, studied the idea and in a preliminary report in December estimated its costs for the first two years after a change would increase by $5.2 million.

The estimate increased dramatically Monday for two reasons.

Since December, four affected state departments — transportation, workforce development, health services and children and families — have submitted their own cost estimates totaling between $9.9 million and $10.5 million, said GAB spokesman Reid Magney.

After the GAB’s initial report in December, when the projected cost of ending ending same day registration was a third of the latest estimates, Gov. Walker told reporters that he would stop his pursuit to end the program, citing the cost. But other Republican legislators in the state may still opt to pursue a bill to strip away same day registration, and Walker has not signaled that he would veto a potential bill. Nationwide, Republicans have waged war on voter rights in the last several years, supporting discriminatory voter ID laws while simultaneously seeking to end early voting and same day registration with little regard for the costs, both financial and otherwise.

During the November 2012 election, Black and Hispanic voters waited nearly twice as long to vote as whites, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis. New York Times graphs summarizing the analysis show that white voters waited an average of 12.7 minutes, while Black and Hispanic voters waited an average of 20.2 minutes:

Long lines in several swing states were a major concern during this election, and the longest lines were in Florida, where another recent study estimated that at least 201,000 people may have been deterred from voting by lines that were hours long. This was in no small part due to Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) elimination of 6 early voting days in the state and other voter suppression initiatives that several top Republicans later admitted were intended to keep Democrats from the polls. Both the MIT analysis and a New York Times/CBS poll showed that Democrats had longer average wait times than Republicans. In the wake of the election, 14 states are considering proposals to expand early voting, including Florida, where Gov. Scott is now publicly supporting a restoration of the early voting days he cut.

A report released by the Brennan Center for Justice Monday proposes congressional action to modernize the voting system through voluntary automated registration that moves with the voter from state to state, federal investment in voter registration reform, as well as online voter registration options and same-day registration options. Democrats expect President Obama to address voter modernization reform during his State of the Union next week.

In the United States, ten states plus the District of Columbia allow voters to register to vote on election day — effectively removing the registration requirement as an obstacle to the fundamental right to vote. In the overwhelming majority of states, however, activists and political campaigns often have to race to register voters before a deadline. And conservative politicians have even raised artificial barriers to registration in an effort to reduce the franchise.

It does not have to be this way, however. To the contrary, a constitutional court in Hungary just struck down the conservative government’s attempt to impose an American-style voter registration system on its electorate:

[Prime Minister Viktor] Orban’s Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance approved a new voting system in November in one of the most hotly contested steps of a flurry of reforms that included a new constitution and a swathe of laws that critics say entrench Fidesz’s power.

“Mindful of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, the Constitutional Court has established that for those with Hungarian residency the registration requirement represents an undue restriction on voting rights and is therefore unconstitutional,” the court said in a statement.

It added that voter registration for Hungarians outside the borders was justified.

The changes would have required 8 million domestic voters to register in person or online at least two weeks before elections in 2014. Voters currently only have to turn up at polling stations on election day to be identified from an existing state-run database and cast their vote.

Automatic or mandatory voter registration systems are increasingly common in modern democracies. They are now the rule in Australia, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Admittedly, such a system would be more difficult to implement in the United States, where voter rolls are maintained by many state governments rather than one central government, but same day registration achieves many of the benefits of automatic registration by similarly ensuring that registration will not be an obstacle to voting.

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI)

A new study by Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board, the non-partisan board that oversees the state’s elections, suggests a proposal to eliminate the state’s vaunted same-day voter registration system would carry a massive price tag. The plan — proposed by members of the Republican majorities in the state legislature and backed by Gov. Scott Walker (R) — would initially cost approximately $5.2 million and would not reduce the workload for local clerks, the report found.

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel notes:

Wisconsin has allowed people to register at the polls since 1976. Because of the state law allowing election-day registration, Wisconsin is exempt from aspects of the federal Motor Voter Act of 1993 and the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. Eliminating election-day registration would make those provisions kick in and require people to be given voter registration forms at Division of Motor Vehicles offices and public assistance offices.

Even if lawmakers repeal the election-day registration law, those who moved within the same jurisdiction between elections would still be able to update their voter registrations at the polls under federal law. Federal law would also require Wisconsin clerks to keep names on their poll lists for longer periods of time. Removing voters from the list would be a more costly, cumbersome process that would require sending mail to all voters in an effort to weed out those who have moved, died or otherwise should come off the rolls.

Under the current system, Wisconsin has one of the highest voter participation rates in the country. But beyond suppressing voter turnout, elimination of same-day voter registration would mean millions in new costs for a state that, according to Walker, required a massive “budget repair bill” in 2011 to cut $1.25 billion in aid to education and local governments.

Local clerks and citizens groups have strongly opposed the proposed change. Among those who took advantage of the state’s same-day voter registration last month was Walker’s own son, whom Walker personally accompanied to the polls.

When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) proposed repealing a decades-old state law that allows citizens to register on Election Day, he said his motivation was to make the process easier for the state’s municipal election clerks.

To Walker’s surprise, one of the first major groups to push back on his proposal is the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association.

In fact, the organization’s election communications chairwoman Diane Hermann-Brown said, eliminating Election Day Registration would actually make their jobs significantly more difficult. The Wisconsin State Journal has more:

But the state’s municipal clerks — the ones who run elections — are not looking to be relieved of the extra work, said Diane Hermann-Brown, election communications chairwoman for the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks’ Association. In fact, eliminating the practice would create a “heavy burden” on municipalities and the state, said Hermann-Brown, who is the city clerk in Sun Prairie.

“There’s no way we’d be in favor of that,” she said.

Hermann-Brown pointed to a number of new election regulations that the state would be forced to adopt if it repealed Election Day Registration. For instance, clerks would be required to use provisional ballots, which can turn into a bureaucratic nightmare for election officials. State agencies, like the BMV, would be required to help register voters as well.

Walker’s announcement came just two weeks after Obama’s won the swing state of Wisconsin this month. Republicans won a handful of state Senate races the same day, giving the GOP control of both the legislature and the governorship.

There’s a very good reason why Walker and his Republican allies want to get rid of Election Day Registration. In Milwaukee, which has far more minorities than other areas of the state and gave 79 percent of its votes to Barack Obama, nearly 1 in 5 voters registered on Election Day. It was particularly popular among local college students at Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who voted overwhelmingly for Obama.

Two weeks after Barack Obama and Sen.-elect Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) carried the state of Wisconsin with the support of minorities and young voters, Gov. Scott Walker (R) announced one of his major policy proposals for the upcoming session: ending the state’s 40-year old law that allows citizens to register to vote on Election Day.

And with Republicans now back in control of the Wisconsin state legislature, Walker may well get his way next year.

In 2008, Wisconsin enjoyed the second highest turnout of any state in the nation (72.4 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot), due largely to the fact the Badger State law allows residents who aren’t registered or have recently moved to register at the polls. That year, approximately 460,000 people used Election Day Registration, 15 percent of all Wisconsinites who cast a ballot.

Walker pressed his case for ending same-day registration during a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library in California on Friday:

“States across the country that have same-day registration have real problems because the vast majority of their states have poll workers who are wonderful volunteers, who work 13 hour days and who in most cases are retirees,” Walker said. “It’s difficult for them to handle the volume of people who come at the last minute. It’d be much better if registration was done in advance of election day. It’d be easier for our clerks to handle that. All that needs to be done.“

Wisconsin was the first state to enact Election Day Registration in 1971, followed soon by states like Minnesota and Maine. Today, eleven states have laws allowing citizens to register at the polls. These states enjoy the highest turnout in the nation not by chance, but because Election Day Registration boosts turnout by 7 to 14 percentage points. In addition, studies show that minorities, poorer voters, and students benefit the most from being permitted to register on Election Day.

Republican legislators in Maine attempted a similar move last year, repealing the state’s 40-year-old Election Day Registration law. However, a citizen backlash erupted, sending the matter to a statewide referendum where voters rebuked the legislature and restored the law by a 2-to-1 margin.

The last time Walker and his Republican allies won complete control of the legislature in 2010, they immediately passed a discriminatory voter ID law that would have disenfranchised people like 84-year-old Ruthelle Frank had it not been blocked by a state judge.

Now, with Wisconsin State Republicans riding high, they appear to again be setting their sights on chipping away at voting rights.