Letter: Protect Democracy with Automatic Voter Registration

Because of recent information concerning disenfranchised minority voters and a letter about efforts by Rep. Finchem and other Republican legislators to “protect against voter fraud”, I looked up Arizona historical election data and the voter fraud convictions by the Arizona Attorney General's Office. Since 2008, there were 20 convictions, 0.00015379% of the votes cast! President Trump, claiming without a shred of proof that millions of people voted illegally in his election, created a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, now disbanded. Yet, neither he nor Congress nor our Arizona legislators are doing much to protect against real threats of attacks on elections by hacking our voting systems, fake ads, or dark money nefarious influences. Instead there are proposals to make registering to vote more difficult and polling places are being reduced. 16 states have automatic voter registration which if available in Arizona would increase registration rates, protect minority populations, automatically correct the voter rolls of this and any state from which the registrant has moved, and save Arizona money.