A majority of Americans support laws that make it easier to vote.
Oregon became the first state to automatically register people to vote last week — anyone who is eligible to vote and has dealt with the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles will now be automatically registered to vote and send a ballot in the mail 20 days before statewide elections.
Fifty-four percent of Americans support this type of automatic registration, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. Another 55 percent favor allowing people to register on the same day as an election. Both types of voting laws face 35 percent and 33 percent opposition, respectively.
However, a majority of Americans (66 percent) do not support making voting mandatory — thus making those who do not vote face criminal penalties. Less than three in 10 Americas (26 percent) support compulsory voting.
Earlier this month, President Obama questioned whether voting should be mandatory in an effort to reduce the influence of money in politics.
“If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country, because the people who tend not to vote are young; they’re lower income; they’re skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups; and they’re often the folks who are — they’re scratching and climbing to get into the middle class. And they’re working hard, and there’s a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls,” Obama said during a town hall event in Cleveland, Ohio. “We should want to get them into the polls.”
According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, turnout of eligible voters in the 2014 midterm elections was less than 37 percent — rather, nearly 2 in 3 eligible voters (or 144 million Americans) decided not to vote.
However, despite support for laws making it easier to register to and cast a vote, only 22 percent of Americas think the government should work to get more people to vote in elections, the HuffPost/YouGov poll found. A majority of Americans (71 percent) think that it is an individual’s responsibility to decide whether or not to vote.
This effort to increase voter turnout is not unusual around the world. At least 26 countries have compulsory voting, according to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll of 1000 U.S. adults was conducted March 24-25 with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
