Here’s some good news on the voting front. Illinois GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill letting several state agencies automatically register people as voters when they have interactions.
Rauner, who faces re-election in 2018, vetoed a similar bill a year ago. At that time, he claimed it would “open the door to voter fraud.”
What’s changed is that he faces a tough re-election fight.
Here’s a description of the new law from a story on Huffington Post:
After the state’s legislature failing to override his veto, voting advocates brought up the measure again this year. They tweaked the language making it so that voters had to affirm they were eligible to vote when they registered and giving them the option to opt-out at the time of a transaction with the state agency. The new law also allows the state to verify voter rolls using data collected from state agencies participating in automatic voter registration, something that will significantly improve accuracy, according to Abe Scarr, the director of Illinois PIRG, which was a member of the Just Democracy coalition that pushed for automatic voter registration.
The retooled legislation passed both chambers of the Illinois legislature unanimously.
Advocates appealed to legislators by emphasizing the ways the new law would save money and improve the accuracy and security of voter rolls, Scarr said.
Illinois officials now will develop new guidelines on how to implement the law.