Automatic voter registration a good idea

It is no surprise that Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has worked quickly to undo many ideas put forward by his predecessor Scott Walker. After all, he campaigned on the idea of restoring our democracy. And he has offered ideas to do just that. Contained in Evers’ budget is a plan to end the practice of gerrymandering our legislative districts by instead creating a bipartisan system of drawing the political maps. Evers wants to go further in returning fairness to our elections. His budget also calls for making it easier for people to vote. He wants to allow people to register to vote by adopting automatic voter registration. When people go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew their driver’s license of get an ID card, they could also register to vote. Under the plan, the DMV would work with the state’s election commission to process the paperwork. That streamlines the process and makes it easier for those seeking to participate in our democracy to do so. Governor Walker worked to make it harder for people to participate, by rigging legislative districts and forcing people to show an ID in order to cast a ballot. This small step of automatic voter registration would improve the health of our democracy, and who could argue with that?