Brennan Center for Justice

Mississippi currently has the Electronic Registration at DMVs component of Voter Registration Modernization in place. Mississippi also has electronic pollbooks in at least one county.

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

Background
Mississippi’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) has been operating a fully automated system of voter registration since 2006. Prior to this time, interested DPS customers would fill out a separate form for voter registration, which officers of the Department’s Highway Patrol were then responsible for delivering to county election officials.

According to Elections Consultant Madalan Lennep, state election officials took the development of their new voter registration database as an opportunity to streamline this system. Their primary goal was to eliminate delays in delivering forms; at the same time, they recognized that an electronic system would reduce costs and workloads for both the DPS and county election officials. Ms. Lennep reports that DPS officials were very receptive to the proposal, and she does not recall any separate costs associated with its implementation. The development process was fairly simple, and was completed in a matter of months.
 

Outcomes
According to Ms. Lennep, the new system has enjoyed widespread support. It has relieved DPS officials of the effort and expense of collecting, sorting, and delivering forms; reduced workloads for county election officials; and helped voters by ensuring their registrations reach election officials promptly and reliably, while also reducing the risk of data entry errors. She also observes that electronic registrations are less likely to be incomplete than paper forms, since they originates with a DPS official who can point out omissions directly to applicants. And of course, they are never illegible.

How Paperless Registration Works in Mississippi
Motor Vehicle Registration. An individual does business at a DPS office by filling out a paper form, and can check a box for voter registration. A DPS employee then collects this form and copies it into the Department’s computer system. In doing so the employee checks a box to flag voter registrations and indicates the applicant’s county of residence.

Within a few days, the DPS system will automatically copy the data required for voter registration from the new file and upload them, along with the applicant’s digitized signature, to a secure FTP site. The statewide voter registration system then collects the registration and makes it available for review by election officials in the appropriate county, who decide whether to accept or reject the application. If a local official finds that a registration marked for his county belongs somewhere else, he can redirect it using a drop-down box.

In the past, Mississippi has considered the following VRM-related legislation:

• Online Registration. This bill would have created an online voter registration registration system for voters with a valid Mississippi driver's license or state ID through the Secretary of State's web site. The bill died in Committee. (S.B. 2549)
• Online Registration. This bill would have required the Secretary of State to conduct a study to determine the cost and feasibility of an online voter registration system. The bill died in committee. (S.B. 2767)