About the Project

Students Lead the Charge—Open Access to Democracy

Voting is a fundamental right in democracy. However, becoming eligible through voter registration is excruciatingly inefficient in this country. Every election cycle organizations spend tens of millions of dollars, and thousands of volunteers devote time and energy to make sure their fellow citizens are allowed to vote.

Despite these efforts, every year millions of potential voters don’t get registered in time, and students fall through the cracks as they transition to new states or living situations. The traditional registration process is slow, ineffective, and hurting participation.

It's time to bring our democracy up to speed.

Step One: Instant Online Voter Registration

You can file your taxes or buy a car online, but when it comes to registering to vote, in 48 states, you still have to fill out a long, hard to read form and mail it in. This is problematic for several reasons:

• When mailed, if one mistake is made on the form, there’s often no time to correct the error and that person is not allowed on the rolls
• Paper forms require at least 30 days to be processed by a Secretary of State’s office, discouraging same day voter registration laws from being adopted
• This idea is predicated on the notion that Millennials know what a “stamp” is and how to use it
• Paper forms are hard to distribute and track

On January 1st, 2008, Washington State became the second state in the country after Arizona to adopt Instant Online Voter Registration. It has changed the way organizations and student groups conduct their voter registration drives, and makes it easier than ever for students to register to vote, and has created new opportunities to get people into the process.

New Opportunities – More Access

Facebook

Because the system is online, thousands of students in Arizona and Washington State have been able to register to vote directly from their Facebook profile in less than 3 minutes! Students are also able to find out if their friends are registered to vote, and if not, call them out on their newsfeed.

Course Registration

While not yet implemented in WA or AZ, students could now instantly register to vote while they are registering for their college courses during orientation or before Fall semester. Rather than hoping freshman will quickly understand a new states voting laws and register in the short window between arriving to school and the election, this creates the realistic possibility of 90% voter registration among college freshman!

Imagine that in 2010 and 2012, students were able to register to vote instantly from Facebook, inviting their unregistered friends along the way. This is just one example of how online voter registration would help the student movement dramatically effect elections and public policy. This isn’t simply a cool sounding possibility; this is something we can achieve before the next presidential election.