A dramatic drop in automatic voter registrations in Georgia may be caused by a government website that required potential voters to click a button before they could sign up.
That’s not how automatic voter registration is supposed to work. The intent of the program is to register voters at driver’s license offices by default, with an option not to register.
The change to automatic registration could explain a sharp decline in the rate of Georgians who opted to register through the Department of Driver Services, from 79% in 2020 to 39% last year, according to government records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The reason for the decrease wasn’t known until pictures of the department’s website surfaced in response to the AJC’s reporting Monday, showing that it had altered its online voter registration form last year.
Before January 2021, drivers had to check a box if they wanted to decline to register or update their voting information. The website changed last year so that voters were required to click “Yes” or “No” when asked whether they wanted to register. Drivers received an error message if they didn’t select either option.
“It’s really not true automatic voter registration,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, an attorney focused on voting rights for the Brennan Center for Justice. “This seems like a good example of the importance of automatic voter registration in its proper form. Automatic registration takes some of the stumbling blocks out of the way of voters to help them participate.”