VRM in the States: Washington
Washington currently has the Automated Registration at DMVs and Online Registration components of Voter Registration Modernization in place.
The excerpt below was adapted from an appendix to the 2010 report Voter Registration in a Digital Age.
Background
The DOL has electronically sent registration data to the Secretary of State’s office since the 1990s, but with the purpose of complementing the use of paper forms. Until 2008 the DOL collected signed registration forms from visitors and mailed them to the office of the Secretary of State, which would then forward them to the appropriate county offices.
The Washington State Legislature authorized online voter registration in April 2007, and officials at the Department of Licensing (DOL) decided to implement a fully paperless system for collecting and forwarding voter registrations at the same time. The state began accepting both online and automated DOL registrations in January 2008. Work at the county level took a little more time, but by November 2008 all but eight counties had begun receiving registration data electronically.
Washington spent approximately $170,000 on state-level implementation work, and $109,000 among its counties. The DOL incurred some separate costs not included in this total, but according to DOL IT Specialist Michael Bethany, these were minimal. Election Information Services Manager David Motz has estimated that server maintenance and electricity for the online system cost approximately $22,000 annually.
Outcomes
DOL registrations have increased dramatically since 2008. From 95,000 in 2004 and 103,000 in 2007, their number grew to 178,000 in 2008 and 205,000 in 2009. In relative terms, the DOL accounted for approximately 15 percent of all registrations recorded by the Secretary of State’s office in 2004 compared to about 27 percent in 2008. In 2009 this proportion rose to 70 percent. Voters were also quick to embrace online registration, submitting over 200,000 online transactions in 2008, of which 18-24 year-olds submitted nearly one in three.
Paperless registration saved over $126,000 for the Secretary of State’s office in 2008, minus the one-time cost of mailing electronic registrations to counties still in the process of upgrading their systems. The effect has been even greater at the county level. Officials in Pierce County estimate that they can process an electronic registration in half the time required for a paper form, or less. They also report that electronic registrations are less error-prone than paper, requiring less follow-up work with voters. A recent survey of four Washington counties has further determined that they save "anywhere from $.50 to $2.00" on each registration they receive electronically.
In addition, DOL officials estimate their employees save 30 seconds per registration over the old approach, while offices save on the costs printing and processing paper. DOL IT Specialist Michael Bethany also reports that his office received a large amount of positive feedback from employees and visitors alike when it first introduced the new system. And Election Information Services Manager David Motz has estimated that, assuming people who submitted online transactions would otherwise send mail-in forms, the online portal saved voters nearly $90,000 in postage in 2008.
How Paperless Registration Works in Washington
Automated Registration. Individuals do business with the DOL by going through an interview, during which the interviewer will ask if they would like to register to vote. If so, the visitor affirms her eligibility to register and the interviewer flags her record. That night the DOL system will automatically collect data and the digitized signature from this record and post them to a storage area network. The statewide voter registration system then retrieves and forwards the application to the appropriate county election office for review.
Online Registration. Only state residents with a valid driver’s license or non-driver’s identification card can access Washington’s online registration system. They submit new registrations through the main online portal, while registered voters submit address updates through a separate voter services site. Voters can only update an existing registration if they move within a county; if they move between counties, they must submit a new registration.
New Online Registrations. To submit an online voter registration, a user navigates to an introductory page on the Secretary of State’s website, selects her language (English, Spanish, or Chinese), and begins. She first clicks boxes to verify that she is a voting-age U.S. citizen and Washington resident, then proceeds to enter her name, date of birth, zip code, and driver’s license or identification card number. She is also presented with 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.
The online system authenticates the user’s personal information in real time by attempting to pair it with a record in the DOL database. Once a match is found, the user can advance to a page in which she must enter her residential address, county, and gender; she may also choose to provide an alternate mailing address, a request for mail-in ballots, and other information. On the same page she review s a declaration eligibility and clicks boxes authorizing the use of her DOL signature and affirming the truthfulness of the information she has entered. The user then proceeds to a final page where she reviews and submits her information.
In the past, Washington has considered the following VRM-related legislation:
- Election Day Registration. This bill would have allowed voter registration up to and on Election Day. (H.B. 1798)
