Virginia Democrats just enacted a huge range of voting reforms, including automatic registration

Over the weekend, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam signed several election bills into law, the culmination of a historic legislative session that saw Democrats exercise full control over state government for the first time in a quarter century. Among those new laws is one establishing automatic voter registration through the state Department of Motor Vehicles, meaning all eligible DMV customers will be automatically registered unless they opt out. As shown on the map at the top of this post (see here for a larger version), more than a dozen states have now adopted automatic registration in some form.

Northam also signed several other new laws, including ones that:

• Make Election Day a state holiday by replacing a holiday that had honored Confederate generals
• Remove the excuse requirement to vote absentee
• Count mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and received within three days afterward, instead of just those received by Election Day
• Extend the close of polling on Election Day from 7 PM to 8 PM
• Repeal the GOP's photo voter ID requirement and allow non-photo IDs instead
• Require hand-filled paper ballots or machines that print paper ballots

The enactment of these reforms follows the Democratic legislature's passage of redistricting reform, which will appear on November's ballot as a constitutional amendment.

Northam also sent some bills back to the legislature, including one that would end prison gerrymandering by counting incarcerated people for redistricting purposes at their last address instead of where they are imprisoned (and can't even vote). Northam asked lawmakers to give deadlines for prisons to provide the state with the needed information, and legislators will reconvene on April 22 to take up returned bills.

Meanwhile, Northam had until Saturday to act on several other bills, the status of which are not yet clear. These measures include bills that would:

• Enable same-day voter registration
• Prepay the postage on absentee mail ballots
• Allow voters to permanently receive an absentee mail ballot in all future elections
• Allow certain out-of-state college IDs to count as voter ID
• Let cities and counties adopt instant-runoff voting in local elections

Before Democrats won full control of the state government in 2019, Virginia ranked among the worst states for voting access. Once Democrats have enacted all of these reforms, Virginia will be one of the better states for making it easy to vote.