SALEM, Ore. — A parade of Republican-controlled states in recent years has made it more difficult to cast a ballot, imposing strict identification requirements at polling stations, paring back early-voting periods and requiring proof of citizenship to register.

Then there is Oregon. It is leading what could become a march in the opposite direction.



From January through April, Oregon added nearly 52,000 new voters to its rolls by standing the usual voter-registration process on its head. Under a new law, most citizens no longer need to fill out and turn in a form to become a voter. Instead, everyone who visits a motor-vehicle bureau and meets the requirements is automatically enrolled. Choosing a political party — or opting out entirely — is a matter of checking off preferences on a postcard mailed later to registrants’ homes.

With the change, Oregon now boasts perhaps the nation’s most painless electoral process; mail-in ballots long ago did away with polling places’ snaking lines and balky voting machines

Whether painless equals effective, however, is another question. For while officials here hope automatic registration fuels a jump in voter turnout, the results of experiments elsewhere and the statistics from last month’s Oregon presidential primary — the first in which the new voters could cast ballots — have been decidedly mixed. Getting more people registered, it seems, does not necessarily mean getting more people to vote.