Voting is getting easier. Surely that's a good thing?

[BloombergOpinion]( [Early Returns]( [Jonathan Bernstein]( Democrats have lately been fighting back hard against voter-identification laws and other Republican attempts to make voting more difficult. Their effort took two steps forward on Wednesday: Automatic voter registration is now [law in Maine]( and moving [closer to passage in New York](. It’s taken just a few years for these laws to spread rapidly through (mostly) Democratic states. Maine is the 16th (plus Washington, D.C.) to move the burden of registration from citizens to the state, which is how it works in most democracies. The Brennan Center for Justice [reports]( that these laws get results: Several states have seen striking increases in registration rates. Because the laws link various databases, automatic registration also tends to produce more accurate voter rolls – thereby reducing delays and lowering costs – which everyone presumably can support. For years, Democrats dealt with this issue by going into a defensive crouch: They tried to challenge voter-ID laws and other restrictions in legislatures, state courts and federal courts. Now they’ve gone on the offensive, with significant results. Automatic registration is one of many provisions included in the first major bill passed by House Democrats this year, a sprawling combination of measures intended to make voting easier and otherwise reform the U.S. electoral system. It’s not going anywhere with a Republican majority in the Senate, but it will likely be a high priority the next time Democrats have unified control of the government. Whether they could pass it over a filibuster is an open question, but it’s not hard to imagine them at least thinking about removing the filibuster to pass such a measure. And Republicans? Their standard rhetoric on this issue focuses on fraud. That’s never been a good fit with voter-ID laws (since voter impersonation at polling sites is extremely rare). But it makes even less sense for fighting laws that shift the burden of registration to the states. Unfortunately, so me partisans have even started treating difficulty in voting as a virtue; the electorate is improved, they say, if it’s restricted to those who are willing and able to jump through hoops to get to the polls. For those of us who think voting should be easy, the good news is that a few Republican states (Alaska, Georgia, West Virginia) have started adopting variations of automatic registration. Perhaps it’ll become a trend that eventually goes national. It should. Burdensome registration requirements were imposed more than a century ago to keep immigrants and others from voting in northern states, at about the same time that black voters were being disenfranchised across the south. They were an anti-democratic mistake then, and they’re no better today. 1. Dan Drezner on [President Donald Trump’s personnel woes](. 2. Michael Tomz and Jessica L. P. Weeks at the Monkey Cage on [public opinion about foreign interference in U.S. elections](. 3. Matt Grossmann speaks with Neil Visalvanich and Seth Masket about the [Democratic Party and women running for office](. 4. Brendan Nyhan on [early general-election polls](. 5. Ed Kilgore on [Senator Elizabeth Warren’s potential]( as a unity candidate. I agree that she’s running a coalition-style campaign, not a factional one. That’s one reason I thought back in the fall that she’d be the likely nominee. Now I’d be more impressed if she started picking up some real endorsements from prominent party actors. We’ll see. 6. Amy Walter with several other [questions about Warren](. 7. Philip Klein on former Vice President Joe Biden’s [odd decision to cite segregationists](. 8. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Eli Lake on the misbegotten Pentagon career of [Patrick Shanahan](. 9. And Dahlia Lithwick on [Shanahan and justice](. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](hash=b9b2681361bede0e1069ca238efb1ec2). Also subscribe to [Bloomberg All Access]( and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. Bloomberg L.P. ● 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Web]( ● [Facebook]( ● [Twitter]( [Feedback]( ● [Unsubscribe](