"It should be convenient and very easy, but it shouldn't be the law," argued Knute Buehler, a Republican state representative in Oregon. The automatic registration bill passed through both houses of the legislature on a party-line vote, and in a phone interview Thursday, Buehler said the law "replaces individual convenience with government coercion." Supporters, including Governor Brown, say it does nothing of the sort. Oregonians will have the opportunity to opt out of automatic registration, and even if they don't, nothing is forcing them to return the actual ballot they receive in the mail.

Unlike Australia, voting isn't compulsory anywhere in the U.S.—at least not yet. President Obama drew attention on Wednesday when, while answering a question on campaign finance reform, he brought up the idea of mandatory voting and said it would be "transformative" for the country. That isn't where Brown wants to go in Oregon, she told me.

Before Obama made his comments, I asked her whether she supported a voting requirement. She laughed. "No, I don’t," she replied. "I don’t think that would be a successful proposal in America, and it certainly wouldn’t be successful in Oregon, let me tell you." Brown took over as Oregon governor a month ago after John Kitzhaber resigned in an ethics scandal involving his fianceé. She is so new on the job that when she got on the phone with me on Wednesday, she said she almost introduced herself with her former title, secretary of state. As Oregon's top election official, she had proposed the new law, which she said built on the Clinton-era federal National Voter Registration Act that required states to allow people to register to vote when they applied for driver's licenses.

The change directs the state's department of transportation to transfer data for eligible voters to the secretary of state's office so that they can be registered. Myrna Pérez, who directs the voting rights and elections project for NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, said the Oregon law is "groundbreaking in that it puts more of the responsibility for registering to vote on the government rather than on voters." Yet its passage has also brought predictable warnings of voter fraud from conservatives. Kris Kobach, the Republican secretary of state in Kansas, said the Oregon law could lead to "a perfect storm of errors."

“I just think it’s a virtual certainty that they will see hundreds or thousands of people mailed two or more ballots, and that can be a very tempting situation where some people may succumb to the temptation to fill out both ballots and vote twice," Kobach said, according to the Wichita Eagle. Brown scoffed at the concerns and suggested Kobach didn't know much about election law in Oregon. The state's new voting system is already more secure than traditional paper registration, she said, because as opposed to simply attesting to their eligibility with a signature, residents have to submit proof of citizenship to the DMV. Brown also pointed out that deep-red Louisiana—or as she described it, "that hotbed of radical activism"—had already piloted an automatic registration system for 16- and 17-year-olds to encourage teenagers to vote when they become eligible.