The good news is that automatic voter registration — the process by which adult citizens are registered to vote when they interact with other state services like the DMV — is coming to New York. The bad news is that it was supposed to have come two years ago, were it not for what are frankly unsurprising delays from the rarely-speedy Board of Elections. We are now looking at an implementation in the second quarter of the new year, though it will vary based on each local agency implementing its own pass-through system. Still, better late than never. Voting isn’t a privilege, but it is a right of all citizens. Every additional point of friction in getting people able and willing to go to the ballot box is an additional opportunity for people not to have their civic voices heard in a state that already has embarrassingly low rates of voter participation. As much as we wish this wasn’t the case, most people just aren’t that politically engaged, and often think about elections, if at all, as they’re happening. But pretty much every single New Yorker will at some point connect with a state agency to receive benefits, services, an identification or something else. If this is the entry point into state systems, there’s no reason not to use it to get folks registered. We’ve already been inching in the direction of reforming some of its outdated and counterproductive voter laws, having instituted online voter registration (that measure came at comparatively speedy rate, also over two years late). It’s not small-ball potential; estimates for the number of eligible but unregistered voters in the state number more than a million. Automatic registration won’t in itself drive these voters out to the polls, but it will make it easier for less-engaged would-be voters to make it out. For all the delays, you could be forgiven for thinking that AVR is some sort of new and experimental process, but it’s a building norm across the country. About half of states and Washington, D.C., from Vermont to West Virginia, have passed some form of it, often to great effect. There’s more to be done to fully modernize our New York’s voting systems and do everything we can to encourage electoral participation. Same day voter registration is another avenue to keep voters from getting tripped up by overlapping requirements. A quarter century into the new millennium, there’s no reason that people should have to register weeks in advance. The city and state could also move towards a fuller embrace of ranked-choice voting, which has already been successfully implemented for municipal primaries. More nonpartisan elections, no elections held on off-years and other reforms can keep advancing the cause of getting New Yorkers voting. We know that Albany and City Hall legislators might view electoral reforms in particular with some skepticism, given a culture of comfortable incumbency and the potential that shaking things up could be a threat to their own electoral prospects specifically. That doesn’t make it not the right thing to do. Voting is the purest manifestation of our system of government, and it should be everyone’s mission to have more of it and have it be as accessible as possible to those who are eligible.