| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. It's amazing how quickly the push for automatic voter registration has turned into law in state after state. Oregon was the first to adopt it in 2015, and it's now spread to 21 other states. If you support making voting easy — and I do — it's one of the best reforms in a very long time. We now have research on how these laws have worked in practice, from Eric McGhee and Mindy Romero of the California Civic Engagement Project. So far, they're just looking at the effects on voter registration, not on turnout — there's not enough evidence yet to do that. What they find, for the most part, is good news. The bottom line: The reforms appear to be very effective at making the DMV a primary method of registration. In many cases, the reform has reshaped the boom-and-bust pattern of registration in a typical election cycle by ensuring that registrants are steadily added throughout the year and voter records are kept updated. This will likely have the long term effect of a sizable increase in registration. Overall, the laws not only make it more likely that people will be registered, but also help prevent purges that eliminate legitimate voters. In most cases, this results in more accurate voter rolls, which everyone should support. It's worth noting that placing the burden on citizens to register, rather than doing it for them automatically, is unusual in democracies — and that the U.S. managed just fine with no registration at all for a long time (indeed, North Dakota still doesn't have it). Registration was one of the changes made during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, designed to exclude the massive waves of new immigrants of the time. It wasn't as effective in preventing European immigrants from voting in northern states as Jim Crow laws were in preventing black citizens from voting in the south, but the impulse was basically the same. That said, the study shows that there's still work to be done. For one thing, automatic registration doesn't seem to have "closed gaps in registration between historically overrepresented and historically underrepresented groups." Whether that finding is evidence that automatic registration has equal effects across populations or that it reinforces current inequalities is probably more complicated. The other issue the authors raise is that different methods have different effects. It turns out that the aggressive method used in Oregon encourages more people to sign up, but may also lead to registering some ineligible voters (such as non-citizens). No one wants that result, and unless states learn to avoid it, support for automatic registration may not be sustainable. Remember, though, that this is a very recent reform, and so it shouldn't be surprising if there are some difficulties putting it in place. One of the most promising aspects so far is that there's bipartisan energy behind the concept: While Democrats have been the main proponents, it's also rolling out in Republican Alaska, Georgia, Utah and West Virginia. I'm looking forward to future research on one crucial question: whether automatic voter registration actually increases turnout. At any rate, it's a good reform, and I hope it keeps spreading. There's just no good reason for registration to be a hurdle for voters. 1. Pavielle Haines at Mischiefs of Faction looks at public opinion on the pandemic by party. 2. Dan Drezner on what international-relations scholars think about the coronavirus. 3. Todd A. Curry, Michael P. Fix, Michael K. Romano and Michael F. Salamone at the Monkey Cage on how state courts have been handling pandemic cases. 4. Jennifer Senior on all the Trump administration's empty desks. 5. Niall McCarthy on the size of pandemic relief packages in different nations. 6. Quinta Jurecic on the Supreme Court case about the president's financial records. 7. And my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Timothy L. O'Brien on Donald Trump's tax returns. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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