While there was much to celebrate in the 2008 election – for example, 3.4 million more young voters than the previous election – it is also important to recognize the enormous hurdles, inefficiencies and problems in our registration system.
 
The inefficiencies in our system cost taxpayers millions and make it harder for election officials to do their jobs.

In a new report, Saving Dollars, Saving Democracy, U.S. PIRG, our national federation, surveyed 100 counties and estimated conservatively over $33,467,910.00 of public money was spent on simple registration implementation and registration error-correction issues in 2008.

OSPIRG supports modernizing our registration system by implementing an automatic registration system federally. By creating a system linking existing federal and state databases with the state voter rolls we will cut local costs and streamline our system.