From Chicago Tribune

By Rick Pearson

The group iVote says the state lawmakers who pledged to back legislation that would make voter registration automatic for those who get a driver's license have now signed on as co-sponsors.

“We're overjoyed to see that a growing number of legislators who pledged their support through iVote for AVR are now becoming co-sponsors of the bill,” said iVote board member and co-founder Jeremy Bird. The legislation “would be a game-changer for Illinois, bringing more eligible voters, young and old, into our democracy,” Bird said.

We just heard some amazing news out of Oregon:

Since a new voter registration law was implemented on January 1st, more than 15,000 Oregonians have been added to the voter rolls.

Before the new law, the state registered around 2,000 new voters each month. Now, that number's increased by 375% to 7,500 per month.

From Chicago Tribune

By Rick Pearson

The group iVote, a national voting-rights advocacy organization, is spending $20,000 on digital advertising to promote five state legislative candidates who back a plan to make voter registration automatic when people get or renew a driver's license or a state ID card.

From The Atlantic

By Russell Berman

The state-by-state push to enact automatic voter registration laws is nearing a tipping point.

Or so its supporters hope.

Oregon began proactively adding unregistered citizens to its rolls last month. California will soon follow suit under a state law signed last year. Serious efforts to enact similar proposals through legislative action or citizen ballot initiatives are underway in several other states, including Illinois, Maryland, and Ohio. The drive has won endorsements in the last year from President Obama and both Democrats running to succeed him in the White House.

From Chicago Tribune

By Rick Pearson

The group iVote, made up of voting-rights advocates, says that 62 candidates for the Illinois General Assembly have pledged to support legislation that would make voter registration automatic when people get or renew a driver's license or a state ID card.

The organization estimates more than 2 million people in Illinois are eligible to vote but aren’t registered. It says the secretary of state’s office, which issues driver's licenses and IDs already can check the eligibility and register voters through the current motor-voter law that has employees ask if people want to register to vote.

From The Gateway News

By Marc Kovac

A group has submitted initial petition language to the attorney general’s office for a proposed constitutional amendment requiring automatic voter registration when Ohioans apply for or renew their driver’s licenses.

The Ohio Motor Voter Automatic Registration amendment would register new voters and update existing ones, unless residents opt out in writing.

From TIME

By Sam Frizell

Sixty years after Rosa Parks refused to stand up on a Montgomery bus for a white man, Hillary Clinton travelled to Alabama Tuesday to call for an end to discriminatory laws in the United States. 

“Our work isn’t finished,” Clinton told a gathering hosted by the National Bar Association’s 60th Anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott. “We do have to pay it forward. There are still injustices perpetrated every day across our country, sometimes in spite of the law, and sometimes, unfortunately, in keeping with it.”

From The Economist

Reforms that originate on the west coast have such a distinctive tilt that it is sometimes called the left coast. So with Republicans holding the reins in both houses of Congress, it is no surprise that a new crusade to alter voter registration has gained a foothold in two western states. Thanks to new laws passed in Oregon and California, residents will soon be automatically registered to vote when they get or renew a driving licence or state identification card. Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, states have to offer citizens the option to register when they apply for such documents. Now, instead of “opting in” to vote, residents in California and Oregon will have to “opt out” of registration.

From ThinkProgress

By Kira Lerner

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) vetoed legislation Monday that would have added 1.6 million new voters to the state’s rolls and made New Jersey the third state in the country to adopt automatic voter registration.

After sitting on the “Democracy Act” for almost five months, the governor and Republican presidential candidate vetoed his second voting rights-related bill in three years, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Christie has previously said that he does not support making it easier for residents of his state to vote.