ATLANTA (AP) – A change in a government website that used to make voter registration automatic in Georgia may have resulted in a sharp drop in people registering as they obtained driver’s licenses.
A review of data by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that the share of Georgians who registered through the state Department of Driver Services fell from 79% in 2020 to 39% last year.
Pictures of the department’s website show that before January 2021, drivers had to check a box to decline to register or update their voting information. But the website changed last year so that voters had to click “Yes” or “No” when asked if they wanted to register.
However, the intent of the program is to register drivers by default, not give them an option. The share of unregistered Georgia adults had fallen sharply since automatic registration began in 2016, adding more than 1 million people to the voting rolls.
“It’s really not true automatic voter registration,” Eliza Sweren-Becker, an attorney for the Brennan Center for Justice told the newspaper. “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.”