What to know about Pennsylvania’s new automatic voter registration process

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

 LM Otero / AP Photo

registration form in Richardson, Texas on Jan. 18. One big registration effort this year has drawn controversy among elections officials.

Airdate: September 22nd, 2023

Pennsylvania became the 24^th state in the country to implement an automatic voter registration process earlier this week.

Eligible Pennsylvanians will be automatically registered to vote when they renew their driver’s licenses or ID cards through Penndot. It fulfills a campaign promise made by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Robby Brod, WITF’s Democracy Beat reporter was on The Spark Friday where he explained voters previously could register to vote when applying for a driver’s license but now they’ll be registered to vote automatically,”Previously, eligible voters were required to opt in to the voter registration process while going through this process. But now it’s going to kind of be flipped where they’re going to have to opt out of it. And Pennsylvanians have been able to register to vote at DMVs. I’m going back to 1993. So essentially, this is kind of flips the requirement from opting out, from opting in to opting out.”

Shapiro said the idea is to get more Pennsylvanians registered to vote and to actually vote.

Since the 2020 election, anything having to do with voting and elections will get some criticism. Several Republican lawmakers took Shapiro to task for not going through the legislature to approve the automatic voter registration process. The conservative Freedom Caucus threatened legal action Friday.

One of the criticisms is that non-American citizens will register to vote. Brod was asked about that,”The only people who will be eligible to register to vote while getting a driver’s license or getting a different form of ID or something like that are people who are already determined to be eligible to be able to vote. So, somebody who is going to get a driver’s license, who’s not a citizen, they won’t even be asked to register to vote because while they’re registering, if they provide a Social Security number, which some non-American citizens are issued because they do work in the state and in the country that needs to be taxed. Somebody, a non-citizen with a Social Security number going to register to get a driver’s license. They’re not going to be asked to register to vote because while going through the process, it will be determined that they’re ineligible. So the same documents that you use to register to get a driver’s license are not the same that you need to require to vote.”