Maryland Becomes 12th State To Enact Automatic Voter Registration, NRA Wails About “Enrolled Illegals” Voting

Mother Jones reports:

Maryland became the 12th state to enact automatic voter registration on Thursday after Republican Gov. Larry Hogan declined to veto a bill that had passed the Democratic-controlled legislature. Maryland has half a million unregistered voters, according to a 2017 report by the department of legislative services.

Maryland’s adoption of automatic registration comes as lawmakers in blue and purple states across the country have been taking aggressive steps to expand access to the ballot this year, in an attempt to combat Republican voter suppression efforts at the state and national level.

Under the bill, eligible voters will automatically be registered when they obtain or renew a driver’s license at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or interact with other agencies such as the state’s health insurance exchange and local departments of social services, unless they opt out. The new law takes effect in July 2019 and could register 400,000 new voters, according to a report by Demos.

The NRA’s Dan Bongino is extremely upset:

They want to get you signed up for the voter rolls so that they can go out and target you. It’s relatively easy, if you’re on the voter rolls, for people with walk lists to go out and knock on your door. And listen, voting’s great, you should vote, I’m not disincentivizing anyone to vote. But you should be voting because you can vote, you’re legal — you’re in the country legally, and you have an interest in the process. If you don’t have an interest in the process and don’t care, you know, then you’re a disinterested voter, then you know what, that’s fine, do your thing, it’s your freedom to vote or not vote. But automatically enrolling people in the process, which potentially enrolls illegals as well, is very very dangerous.