52 U.S.C. § 20504 — Simultaneous application for voter registration and application for motor vehicle driver’s license

(a) In general. Every state driver's license application, including renewals, doubles as a voter registration application for federal elections. This happens automatically unless the applicant refuses to sign the voter registration part. If someone already registered to vote before, submitting this new application updates that old registration instead of creating a separate one. (b) Limitation on use of information. If someone declines to sign the voter registration part of their license application, the state can't use the fact that they declined for anything except voter registration purposes. (c) Forms and procedures. Every state must build a voter registration form into its driver's license application. That voter registration part: - can't ask for information that duplicates what's already on the license part of the form, except for a second signature or anything needed under the eligibility statement below; - can only ask for the minimum information needed to stop duplicate registrations and let election officials check eligibility and run the registration process; - must include a statement listing each eligibility requirement (including citizenship), have the applicant swear under penalty of perjury that they meet them, and require the applicant's signature; - must print, in the same size print as that eligibility statement, the required voter-notice information from section 20507(a)(5)(A) and (B), plus a promise that a decision to decline registration stays confidential and is used only for voter registration, and a promise that where someone submits their registration also stays confidential; and - must be made available to the state election official as the applicant submitted it, or in machine-readable or other format, as state law provides. (d) Change of address. A change-of-address form submitted for a driver's license also updates the person's voter registration address for federal elections, unless the person marks on the form that the address change isn't for voter registration. (e) Transmittal deadline. Normally, a motor vehicle office must send a completed voter registration form to the state election official within 10 days of accepting it. But if the office accepts the form within 5 days of the state's registration deadline for an election, it must send it within 5 days instead.