Or at least, there will be an iPad-compatible mobile application for that, in May, according to Project Vote, which has collaborated with Echo Interaction Group to create software that would help voter registration organizations register applicants to vote over a mobile phone or computer.
Only four U.S. states currently support fully automated online voter registration - Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. Project Vote appears to be banking on optimism that more states will soon follow their lead.
There are, of course, a few voter fraud prevention issues posed by online voter registration that must be overcome.
Many states currently allow voters to fill out voter registration forms online, but still require eligible citizens to complete the registration process by printing out the completed forms, signing them by hand, and then mailing them or hand-delivering them to a local voter registration office, in order to ensure that a valid signature is on file for comparison in case the voter's identity ever needs to be verified.
The four states that do allow online registration get around the signature verification dilemma by giving voter registration officials access to their existing databases of drivers' license and state ID signatures for the purposes of signature verification. When a citizen registers to vote online, he or she is required to submit a valid drivers' license or state ID number matching his or her name, which is then used to match the voter registration application with a digital record of the voter's signature. Theoretically, other states could use the same system.
As someone who has personally spent hundreds of volunteer hours helping my fellow Missourians register to vote, I have to say, I'm excited by the prospect of a mobile online registration application. Currently, in my own state, voter registration volunteers must travel to the county voter registration office (which is only open during regular business hours) to pick up boxes of voter registration forms, ask people who would like to register to vote to fill those forms out by hand, and then take those forms back to the county voter registration office for submission before a certain deadline.
When I worked in 2007 and 2008 as a voter registration volunteer for the Obama campaign, voter registration canvassing trips were regularly punctuated by returns to the volunteer office to turn in filled out registration forms and pick up new ones. Voter registration events at local fairs and political events would end, by necessity, whenever the volunteers ran out of forms. There a few were times, in fact, when our entire local volunteer office would run out of paper forms, after which our entire team would be unable to help anyone to register to vote for hours or even days until someone could go to the voter registration office (again, only possible during business hours) to get more forms.
A voter registration volunteer with a mobile device equipped with the ability to register voters online would never have stop work to drive across town and wait in line to get cumbersome paper forms, because the forms would never run out. Will a well-functioning online voter registration app, all voter registration volunteers would have to worry about is recharging their mobile devices, which could easily be done in a coffee shop or a car.
And the cost of implementing mobile voter registration technology would probably not be prohibitive for most organizations that promote voter registration. Organizations that work to register voters generally already equip their volunteers and employees with mobile devices for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has ever supervised a voter registration drive -- when one needs to keep track of workers who often must split up to spread out through a crowd, or walk alone or in small groups through unfamiliar neighborhoods, and make sure that those people stay safe, organized, and on schedule, it's clearly good practice to make sure all of those workers carry mobile phones.
So, I hope ProjectVote succeeds with their drive to make it easier for Americans to register to vote via mobile device. When we make the voter registration process more accessible, we improve our democracy by empowering more American citizens to make their political voices heard.
H/T to MOMocrats Contributing Writer and fabulous PunditMom, Joanne Bamberger.
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