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Democrats won a whole lot of elections in 2022, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/upshot/midterm-election-abortion-democracy.html" target=_blank>in no small part</a> on their vow to strengthen and defend democracy. But if they hope to turn the issue into a sustained political winner, they have to deliver on that promise by showing voters what a pro-democracy <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/31/liberals-push-biden-ambitious-agenda/" target=_blank>governing agenda</a> actually looks like.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is set to make a big move in this direction by unveiling a big change on Tuesday that will implement what’s known as “automatic voter registration” statewide.

Automatic registration makes getting on the voter rolls something you have to opt out of, rather than actively sign up for in advance. An underappreciated success story, it has been put into effect in <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/automatic-voter-registration" target=_blank>two dozen states</a>, mostly by Democrats. It typically works by automatically registering customers at state Department of Motor Vehicles offices (or other agencies) or by automatically extending them that option, while offering an opt-out alternative.

“I see voter participation as key to strengthening democracy,” Shapiro told me in an interview, noting that he is “committed to ensuring free and fair elections, and to making sure every eligible voter can make their voice heard.”

The insight behind automatic voter registration is that the registration process often creates a bureaucratic barrier that needlessly dissuades voting and is sometimes manipulated by vote-suppressors. By keeping a registration process in place while removing the need to affirmatively initiate it, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3933442" target=_blank>studies show</a>, AVR encourages democratic participation. AVR <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/Case_for_Automatic_Voter_Registration.pdf" target=_blank>also tends to make</a> voter rolls more accurate and more up to date.

In Pennsylvania’s version of automatic registration, residents who are obtaining new or renewed driver’s licenses and state ID cards will be automatically moved through the voter registration process unless they opt out — provided they are eligible to vote. This will be achieved using the governor’s control over state agencies that administer processes involving driver’s licenses and voting registration.

The change could be dramatic. Shapiro said the state has calculated that 1.6 million people who are eligible to vote in Pennsylvania are not registered, and his office estimates that automatic registration could add tens of thousands of new residents to the voter rolls.

All this has the makings of an important experiment. Perhaps no Democrat campaigned as aggressively in defense of democracy in last year’s midterm elections as Shapiro did. As state attorney general in 2020, he fought Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse his loss, and in 2022, Shapiro <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/05/josh-shapiro-pennsylvania-governors-race-democracy/" target=_blank>vowed to use the governorship</a> to prevent a future stolen election, parlaying all that into a landslide victory over ultra-MAGA opponent Doug Mastriano.

In Pennsylvania, the state GOP <a href="https://boltsmag.org/pennsylvania-kentucky-results-and-the-big-lie/" target=_blank>continues to elevate election deniers</a> to positions of local importance, in effect feeding doubts about the state’s voting system itself. But if automatic voter registration is well received in Pennsylvania, it could act as an antidote to that MAGA mania.

That’s because efforts to weaken public confidence in elections often seek to exploit existing public beliefs that the system is cumbersome and prone to human error and hacking, even if those beliefs are wrong. If automatic registration can make the voter rolls more accurate and make the system of enrollment and registration more efficient and user-friendly, that could make voters less susceptible to that sort of demagoguery.

“The answer to people undermining faith in our democracy is to give people a democracy that works,” Sean Morales-Doyle, the director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Program, told me. He added that automatic voter registration shows voters that “the people who are attacking our democracy are wrong” and that “the people who are running our elections are trustworthy.”

This is why those who win elections by vowing to protect democracy should deliver on a broader pro-democracy program. In Minnesota, Democrats who gained ground at the state level <a href="https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/minnesota-governor-enacts-the-democracy-for-the-people-act/" target=_blank>passed such a package</a> earlier this year. Such policies, which include expanded early voting, same-day registration and no-excuse absentee voting, are all designed to make election systems more functional and inclusive.

Republicans at the state level have been gerrymandering, restricting ballot access and manipulating the rules of political competition <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Uncivil-War-Democracy-Disinformation-Thunderdome-ebook/dp/B071FLVVVL/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1695073941&sr=1-1" target=_blank>for decades</a>. But Trump has exacerbated these tendencies: Right now, Republicans in numerous states are responding to recent election losses by supercharging anti-democratic, anti-majoritarian tactics — even though evidence is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/14/trump-2024-chances-michigan-wisconsin/" target=_blank>mounting that people are growing accustomed</a> to voting in defense of democracy.

Offering a concrete pro-democracy agenda is a good way for Democrats to keep reinforcing that positive dynamic — and keep putting MAGA on the defensive.

An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics

Hunter College, BA in English

Greg Sargent was a columnist. He joined The Washington Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer.

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