S88 establishes automatic voter registration (AVR) and pre-registration in New York. Individuals applying for eligible Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) documentation, as well as those applying for or re-enrolling in Medicaid, would automatically be registered or pre-registered to vote, unless they explicitly opt out.
The New York State Senate passed S88 on January 13, 2025 by a vote of 40 to 21. We have assigned pluses to the nays because automatic voter registration undermines election integrity by risking the registration of noncitizens and other ineligible individuals, inflating voter rolls, and making fraud easier to commit. This partisan scheme is designed to keep government-dependent individuals—particularly Medicaid recipients—on the rolls to secure votes for one party. Moreover, by tying voter registration to Medicaid, the bill further entrenches that socialist program, which itself is unconstitutional, as Article I, Section 8 grants Congress no authority to create or fund such welfare schemes. Voter registration is a personal civic duty, not a function to be manipulated by government in order to manufacture votes and tilt elections.
