To provide very clear language on voter eligibility. When we do it on paper now we have to check those boxes under penalty of perjury, yes im a citizen and eligible and im filling out this form thats true and correct and so that language is going to be glaring for people going through new motor voter just as an extra caution. We are also through automatic Voter Registration providing serials in the nine languages other than english required in california under the federal Voting Rights act and we are able to do that because as i describe in a minute were sort of doing it as a counter, a pointofsale at dmv. Look at this in oregon for those of you taking detailed notes. In oregon the way it works is after people come to the dmv to do their business, they are sent a letter after the fact saying we captured your information, youre going to be registered unless you tell us otherwise and by the way, since government cant pick a Political Party for you, check box if you like and return this form within 28 days, 30 days. In california we are piggybacking on previously funded Technology Upgrades at dmv so we will be to ask these questions not in the letter after the fact but as that person is applying for or renewing their drivers license or their state id. Its for the first time at the counter, at the dmv, at the point of sale or during that transaction for people renewing my mail, for people renewing online we are building in the protocol to ask those questions then and there and that frankie was logistical. Anyone that for me in california as big diverse day as we are doing that followup letter in 10 different languages . We had a communications challenge there and we had a workaround that we think is better and more efficient. And its also not walk, we are building a foundation here. We are like get 90 percent maybe of the eligible unregistered, we are not capturing 100 so what efforts can you to capture more folks who are eligible but unregistered will be at the dmv . Once we lay down the Technology Background , being able to expand to other state department and agencies and maybe even local governments as well. For all the people who come in and provide name, address date of birth signature, whether youre signing up for Community College classes, whether youre coming in for employment because youre not unemployed, whether you are returning from a tour of duty and signing up for Veterans Benefits or get this, people previously uninsured coming to sign up for healthcare under the aca. Its a Health Benefits exchange. You can be conducting Voter Registration as well. Systematic and again, captured in real time. Political party preference, language preference, if they want to be a vote by mail voter, all that stuff is going to make it more effective and more efficient for us to do. So i envision that over the next several years, once we have a new motor Voter Technology foundation in place and last but not least, some people will criticize new motor voter by saying well, for people who are renewing their drivers license, i may not back to this five years so how efficient is it how quickly are we moving the needle . They have a little bit of a point most people as soon as you move and you are reviewing your checking accounts and all, thats a reminder that you got to renew at dmv and we have this online registration tool like a couple of other dozen states do that isnt just for online first time registration but to update your registration as well. And we also, so taken together i think we are going to be able to keep up and have them keep up with us as well. Last but not least i want to talk about an attitude i came across even from some supporters of automatic registration as we proposed it. It almost took the form of Something Like this. Alex, why are you going through all this effort . Just because you register somebody to vote doesnt mean theyre going to vote. Right . If you havent heard that already, expected. I disagree. Maybe not 100 percent of them will turn out and vote but if nothing else, think about this. If you are eligible to vote in the United States of america not a registered voter today, you do not receive the voter information guide from your state. If you are eligible to vote in the United States but not registered, you dont get the sample ballot fremont county. Something about that. Just through sheer virtue of systematic registration of millions of voters in california and throughout the nation, automatically these new registered voters will receive the voter information guide. They will receive a sample ballot. And maybe they will hear from all the candidates or the politicians seekingreelection. They will hear from the smart ones who know somebodys now eligible to vote and i need their vote. So bottom line is, as a new registered voter you get the invitation to the democracy party. That you never got before. You get that invitation to participate and the information that theres an election coming up, the date, then, where and how to vote. And this brings me to my next project that i put brightly in the Voting Rights category. Lets modernize how to conduct elections in recognition of life in the 21st century. We talked about automatic registration. Why not go one step further and talk about automatically adding a ballot in the hands of every registered voter each and every election. And we have a tremendous opportunity here to really do this right area as we free up time, energy, resources away from Voter Registration because of success on automatic registration, we can ship some of that time, energy and resources on voter outreach and Voter Education and voter turn out. So just as oregon was a big inspiration for us to pursue automatic registration, colorado has been a big inspiration for us on how to conduct elections and make it easier for people to participate. There series of reforms implemented, ours now proposing legislation goes Something Like this. Every registered voter automatic receives about four weeks before election day and they are afforded multiple opportunities for how to submit that ballot. There is still good oldfashioned u. S. Postal service. In colorado, every county installs ballot drop boxes throughout the county and a voter can drop their ballot off at any dropbox convenient to them in the weeks leading up to the election. That goes a step further and sets up curbside ballot drop off stations. Think the post office on april 15. You dont even have to get out of your car. Theres a friendly face representing the county taking a ballot from you curbside. And if you like my mother still insist on going in person to cast your ballot because you wont have it any other way, theyve modernize polling places as we know them to what are known as both centers. I will let them into more detail but basically we afford voters the flexibility and convenience of voting anywhere in the county and not just at one designated location close towhere you live. You have this option in the weeks leading up to election day, not only that first tuesday after the first monday of november from 7 am to 8 pm if youre in california. So the good news is, this is a good idea, we think and were crossing our fingers. We know california has gone from 12 to third in the nation in turnout. California in 2014 right 40 thirds of clearly we have room for improvement and we know where to go for good ideas. San mateo county south of San Francisco piloted this model just last fall and now we have our own metric of whether or not it works. We took the savings from the administration side, investment in education, Public Service announcements, billboards, social media, mailings for a special election. Which normally we take very low turnout. San mateo the highest turnout in 20 years across all demographic groups. That is success. We are sponsoring legislation to implement that in california, have that be the model in the years ahead and so as i conclude here i want to just bring it all together and say heres what i propose our voting night rights agenda be in the 21st century. Yes, we must defend and protect our Voting Rights and insist that congresssooner rather than later restore section 4 of the Voting Rights act was compromised by the Supreme Court. [applause] but im not satisfied with just playing defense. I like to play offense. Offense is how you put points on the board and we can play offense when it comes to Voting Rights by automatically registering all eligible voters. We can play offense by automatically sending editorial registrar about and providing more choices for when, where and how to cast ballots and we can play offense by taking the savings through these reforms and investing in voter outreach and education and turnout and i believe this is the agenda of how we overcome historical barriers to the ballot box and to participation and this is how we instill the tradition of voting for all people and strengthen our democracy and this is how we fight back against the attacks on Voting Rights that we see in far too many states in our country right now. And while we wait for congress to act, we embrace the opportunity for states to be able to act now. This is our agenda. The department of justice cant do it alone. I know later today we hear from former attorney general eric holder whose leadership as attorney general really we dont Civil Rights Division of the department of justice. He was a tremendous leader for the department. He had a story shield when it came to our Voting Rights and lead with a steady hand. I can only hope my contribution to democracy in this nation is just a small fraction of what he has done and is continuing to do so thanks you Brennan Center for your fights for democracy and justice and thank you for having here this morning. [applause]. Thank you secretary padilla, that was truly inspiring and energizing. I would like to call up our panelists now for expanding the electrics, the power of automatic Voter Registration in a changing america. [inaudible conversation] thank you everybody. My name is wendy weiser and i direct the Democracy Program here at the Brennan Center among other things. We work to protect Voting Rights and improve election administration, both of which we believe are significantly advanced by automatic Voter Registration. As you know, we in the United States face a real turnout crisis. Our last federal election saw the lowest voter turnout in 72 years and even with all the enthusiasm around this years president ial primary, turnout remains embarrassingly low. According to a recent pew study analysis of the first 12 primaries this year, turnout was around 17 percent for republicans, less than 12 percent for democrats and thats actually considered reasonably high so this is a real problem we need to address. And in some ways, our country is even going further in the wrong direction on voting. We are facing the first president ial election in which team states have new laws in place that will make it harder for eligible citizens to vote. Is the first president ial election in more than half a century without the full protection of the Voting Rights act and it is the first president ial election in which we are feeling the full force of the Supreme Courts decision in Citizens United. But today, we are here to talk about a major way in which the country is going in the right direction. And the groundswell of momentum around automatic Voter Registration is not only a real bright spot but really inspiring and we are really delighted to be working with all of you on this important reform. So this panel is going to talk a little bit about what are the benefits. We know from our studies of other recent efforts to modernize Voter Registration that this reform will say that states millions of dollars. It will make our voter rolls far more accurate, uptodate and errorfree and it will dramatically increase Voter Registration. But it will also increase participation rates. It will increase turnout among lower propensity voters and those who have the greatest barriers to participation traditionally. New registrations do not necessarily translate into no voters or does it . These are the questions this panel is going to address. Only one state has started implementing automatic Voter Registration so far and that is for god and we are seeing positive results. He heard that the states the empty Voter Registration rates have skyrocketed from 12 to 15,000 registrations, and recent data put out by the Oregon New Motor Voter Coalition suggests these registrations are also translating greater turnout. As of monday morning, according to their analysis, young people aged 18 to 29 are automatically registered in oregon actually voted at higher rates in the primaries than those who were registered using traditional means. If you look at the other unaffiliated voters, those who couldnt vote in the president ial primaries and only voted in the nonpartisan local and judicial elections, turnout was 10 percent for those who were registered automatically as compared to only 3. 3 percent for those registered using traditional means so in other words, automatic registration really seems tohave an impact on participation according to the early returns. We are lucky today to have three brilliant panelists with the experience and background to help shed light on how and why automatic registration can help Voter Participation and turnout and we are going to, theyre going to address questions from three different perspectives, the perspective of Voter Mobilization campaign, behavioral science and brain studies and experimental Political Science and im going to start immediately to my left and we are going to go one at a time with jeremy byrd, one of the countrys leading strategists on Voter Mobilization with extensive experience working to engage and turnout voters. Jeremy is the Founding Partner of 270 strategies and the founding board member of my vote, a new organization that is focused on improving the voting process andpromoting automatic Voter Registration. In 2012, she was the National Field director for president obamas Reelection Campaign where he ran the campaign turnout efforts. She was also the founding leader of battleground texas which focused on registering and turning out millions of texans to vote so we couldnt be more pleased to have you here. Jeremy, joined on your campaign and mobilization experience, i would be grateful if you could talk about how you think automatic registration will impact Voter Participation. Thanks for having me. Good morning everyone. I want to start by getting people to sort of get into myself or think about the times you volunteered on a campaign or work on a campaign and so many of those conversations were to folks with the secretary had talked about earlier disproportionately communities of color, disproportionately young people and disproportionately lowincome communities where people were art excluded from my list of voters because they werent registered within the window of their ability to participate in the process. And you will hear more stats on this but its a massive massive issue. We know and we will hear from the two other panelists that Voter Mobilization works. We know that when we go to the door of somebody who is registered to vote who is less likely to vote that by having a conversation with them talking to them on the phone, when they are visible on that list that we can increase their participation rates. We have seen that whether its from the counties information or the states information or from the campaign or Community Group going and engaging that person. But our resources can shift fundamentally with automatic registration. Going back to 2012 for a second. On obama we called 150 million times to different voters 150 million times to either talk to somebody who was a persuadable voter or a conversation with a voter that was already registered that they wanted to vote and may also registered 2. 1 million voters. To register 2. 1 million voters on the Obama Campaign took 700,000 volunteer shifts, 700,000 volunteer shifts. If those volunteer shifts and by the way this is only in 10 states. Theres a whole issue there about the other 40 states that we can talk about later. If we redirected those volunteer resources of those people that did that Voter Registration we would have been able to knock on or call 35 million additional voters and engage them in the process come and bite them to the democracy party. So simply by campaigns alone to redistribute or resources to people who are already registere