There are a lot of reasons to feel confident about the 2024 election if you’re a Republican. Heck, we’re already seeing Democrats panic about Joe Biden and his lousy poll numbers. Despite everything they’ve done to try to take Donald Trump down, he and Biden are essentially even in general election matchups, and Trump leads Biden in most of the recent polls.
But a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that despite the two men running essentially even in a national matchup, Trump has a significant edge in the battleground states that decided the 2020 election. According to the poll, Trump has a six-point lead in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, and Michigan. If all other states from 2020 remain the same, Trump would easily defeat Biden.
If Democrats have a panic button, they’re pressing it like crazy. And, just like they did in 2020, Democrat governors have to step in to ensure that their party wins. On Tuesday, Josh Shapiro, the Democrat governor of Pennsylvania, bypassed the state legislature to implement automatic voter registration in the state.
“Pennsylvania is the birthplace of our democracy, and as Governor, I’m committed to ensuring free and fair elections that allow every eligible voter to make their voice heard,” Shapiro said in a statement. “Automatic voter registration is a commonsense step to ensure election security and save Pennsylvanians time and tax dollars. Residents of our Commonwealth already provide proof of identity, residency, age, and citizenship at the DMV – all the information required to register to vote — so it makes good sense to streamline that process with voter registration. My Administration will keep taking innovative actions like this one to make government work better and more efficiently for all Pennsylvanians.”
Ahh, yes, nothing says “democratic” more than bypassing the legislative process to enact such a policy.
Related: This Is Why Democrats Are Panicking About Joe Biden
Automatic voter registration has been a part of the Democrats’ efforts to overhaul U.S. elections. In 2021, the Democrat-controlled House passed the Freedom to Vote Act, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the For the People Act. These bills aimed to federalize our elections, and implemented a variety of election power grabs nationwide, including universal mail-in voting, banning voter ID, extended ballot acceptance periods, the restoration of voting rights for felons, and, you guessed it, automatic voter registration. While those bills failed to make it through the Senate, it seems Gov. Shapiro is doing his part to help the Democrats keep Pennsylvania, an important battleground state, blue in the next election.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Pennsylvania is the 24th state to implement automatic voter registration. Of the 18 states that had automatic voter registration in 2020, all but one went blue. Advocates of automatic voter registration claim it makes the already easy process of registering to vote even simpler. Shapiro laughably claims it will make elections more secure.
Cute story. In 2020, Pennsylvania discovered that 11,200 non-citizens were found to have been on the voter rolls after being matched with driver’s license records. Of course, Pennsylvania doesn’t offer driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants… yet. Officials blamed the problem on a glitch, but, interestingly enough, Pennsylvania Democrats tried to expand access to driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants in 2021. Though that effort failed, something tells me there will be renewed interest in doing so in the near future, now that there’s automatic voter registration.
