[C]ome 2017, Vermonters will be able to register to vote just minutes before they cast a ballot on Election Day.
Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law Monday a bill that legalizes same-day voter registration, making Vermont the 14th state to adopt such a policy.
The new law, which won final approval in the Legislature last month, will allow Vermonters to register to vote at a polling place on Election Day without providing any formal identification.
At the signing in Montpelier’s City Hall, Shumlin said the bill sets Vermont apart from states that are imposing restrictions on voter registration.
“One thing that we all know is that if you give folks access to voting — not barriers to voting that have become so fashionable in state after state in America, but access to voting — the numbers go up and democracy is healthier as a result,” Shumlin said
Montpelier City Clerk John Odum applauded the new law at the bill-signing, saying the policy will allow town clerks to make it easier for Vermonters to use their constitutional right to vote.
“We are responsible for maintaining a trustworthy system that puts as little interference between Americans exercising that birthright as possible,” Odum said.
Same-day voter registration will take effect in 2017 in order to give clerks a chance to become familiar with the new system, and so that the new policy will not begin in a presidential election year, when voter turnout tends to be higher.
Current law requires a person to register to vote by the Wednesday before the election.
Odum said he believes the start date is a good compromise; if the Legislature had not given approval to statewide same-day registration, he would have looked into finding a way to implement it in Montpelier, he said.
Alison Kaiser, the town clerk in Stowe, sees things differently. Kaiser said she agrees with many other clerks from around Vermont that the new law leaves the electoral system vulnerable to fraud and error.
“We just don’t feel that we have the framework, the tools in place to ensure that voters are not voting in more than one place or that they are registering where they should be,” Kaiser said Monday.
Ahead of the last general election, she and the town clerk from Whiting found an instance in which an individual was trying to vote in both towns. Kaiser said they detected the case through the statewide voter checklist.
Kaiser also raised concerns about passing a law when there are still many practical barriers that the state will need to overcome before same-day registration will be feasible — among them, providing Internet access for all polling sites.
Kaiser does not expect that the new law will do much to change the state’s voter turnout. Vermont has fairly lenient early voting laws already, she said.
“I think this is going to allow the citizens to procrastinate more,” Kaiser said.
But Secretary of State Jim Condos, who was on hand for the bill signing, is confident that the new law could help bring several thousand more Vermonters to the polls.
Condos does not have concerns about voter fraud in Vermont.
“It’s nonexistent, it really doesn’t happen,” Condos said. “The real, true voter fraud is when someone is denied their right to vote, to cast that ballot.”
