Markos has said it again and again, if our voters turn out, we win. That's a message that's not lost on the DNC, which has adopted a platform with a strong focus on voter rights, including universal voter registration, which could add 50 million new voters.

Now congressional Democrats are backing that up by introducing the most comprehensive federal automatic-voter-registration bills in the House and Senate. The Automatic Voter Registration Act of 2016 is sponsored by Representative Bob Brady and Senators Patrick Leahy, Dick Durbin, and Amy Klobuchar. (A similar bill was introduced in the House last year by Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline with 100 co-sponsors.) No Republicans have signed on to the House or Senate version. […] This [the legislation] will make voter registration far easier, cheaper, and more accurate. “There is no reason why every eligible citizen cannot have the option of automatic registration when they visit the DMV, sign up for healthcare, or sign up for classes in college,” says Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We live in a modern world, and we should strive to have a registration system that reflects that.”

It's pretty basic stuff. All of the federal and state agencies that are now required to provide the opportunity to customers to register to vote would simply automatically enroll them. "There is no reason," as Leahy explained, "why every eligible citizen cannot have the option of automatic registration when they visit the DMV, sign up for healthcare, or sign up for classes in college."

Registration doesn't automatically lead to voting, but universal registration would mean campaigns and organizations wouldn't have to spend time and resources on voter registration—they could work on education and get out the vote efforts. Five states—Oregon, California, Vermont, West Virginia, and Connecticut—have already embraced automatic registration. Oregon has already registered 120,000 new voters in just the first six months of the new program.