Brennan Center for Justice

Delaware currently has the Automated Registration at DMVs with Partial Automation at Public Service Agencies and Portability components of Voter Registration Modernization in place, and Online Registration will be available prior to the November 2014 general election. Delaware also has pre-registration.

Registered voters who have moved within the state can cast a ballot that counts on Election Day even if they had not previously updated their registration information before showing up at the polls.  These voters can go to their new polling place (corresponding to their current address) to cast a regular ballot that will count; once there, they can fill out a change of address form.  For more on portable registration in Delaware, please see our Brennan Center report on permanent voter registration.

The excerpt below was adapted from an appendix to the 2010 report Voter Registration in a Digital Age.

Background
From the mid-1990s to 2008, Delaware’s Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) forwarded voter registrations using both paper and data transfers.  In 2007 election officials decided to implement an "e-Signature" program that would eliminate the need for forms by allowing people to provide an electronic signature for voter registration.  Officials spent approximately one year and $600,000 of HAVA funds to develop e-Signature, and introduced it to the public in February 2009.

By this time they were also operating an online registration system.  Introduced in 2006, the system allows users to submit data through an online portal, although they must print, sign, and mail an application form as well.  However, if county officials do not receive a signed form before an election, a person can still vote a regular ballot if she shows I.D. and provides a signature at the polls, and poll workers verify with the county election office that she submitted a valid online registration.

Outcomes
Delaware has boasted one of the nation’s most successful DMV registration programs since the mid-1990s, regularly accounting for around 80 percent of all voter registrations in the state.  Initial data suggest that e-Signature has not been drawing more people into the process, though it may account for a significant increase in changes of party affiliation.

E-signature has substantially reduced the time and expense of processing voter registrations.  Each DMV office will now save the cost of printing an estimated 1000 pages a day in election years, and 300 a day in off years.  And each registration transaction now takes DMV employees an average of 30 seconds to complete, compared to 90 seconds in the past.  A large drop in workloads since e-Signature debuted also allowed officials to eliminate five staff vacancies in 2009, representing more than 10 percent of Delaware’s total election staff.  This move has already created $200,000 in annual, according to Commissioner of Elections Elaine Manlove, and she hopes to eliminate up to four additional positions as they become vacant.

Officials have encountered no technical difficulties or security problems with either online or DMV registration, and are considering ways to expand both systems.  One idea is to allow the online system to retrieve signatures from the DMV.  And officials are currently planning to introduce e-Signature into the offices of social service agencies that offer voter registration.

How Paperless Registration Works in Delaware
Automated Registration.  A visitor does business with the DMV by going through an interview with a DMV employee, during which the employee asks if she wishes to submit or update a voter registration.  If so, the visitor uses an electronic pad to enter her party preference, review data already on file or keyed in by the employee, and verify that she is a Delaware resident and U.S. citizen.  She then signs her name on the pad, creating a digitized signature.  The employee clicks ‘submit’ to immediately transmit the application through the state’s mainframe network to the appropriate county election office.

Online Registration. Whereas online registration in other states is currently available only to residents with a driver’s license or state ID card, any eligible resident with a Social Security number can use Delaware’s system.  To do so a person visits the homepage for the Commissioner of Elections or for her county elections office and follows a link marked “Online Voter Registration.”  This takes her to a screen that lists the legal requirements for voter registration and explains how the online process works.

By clicking a button labeled “I agree,” the user proceeds to a page in which she enters her name, date of birth, party preference, residential address, and e-mail address, as well as her driver’s license, identification card, or Social Security number.  She affirms her citizenship once more by clicking a box and must respond to a CAPTCHA test, a distorted image of a series of letter or numbers that a user must decipher and copy, and which is employed to distinguish human users from automated programs.  Optional fields allow the user to provide a telephone number and other information. After clicking a button to submit this data, the user is prompted to print, sign, and mail a pre-populated form.  She also receives a confirmation number for her transaction.

If the submission contains no blank fields, the online system accepts and immediately forwards it to the appropriate county.  The application remains incomplete until officials receive a signed registration form in the mail.  However, as noted above, a person may still vote a regular ballot on Election Day even if officials have not yet received her signature, provided she shows valid I.D. and supplies a signature at the polls.