AS A college student in Massachusetts, I’ve seen too many instances where my peers miss voter registration deadlines, causing them to miss participating in elections. During this primary season, I saw an impressive level of political participation and debate in my generation. But despite their interest, many of these eligible voters failed to register in time to participate in the primary.

Some blame this disenfranchisement on young voters themselves, as evidence of apathy. But this argument ignores the reality that our process is outdated and exclusionary, especially for out-of-state students. For instance, one of my high school classmates, a Massachusetts resident, attends West Virginia University. Despite being actively engaged in political discussion, he missed the registration deadline because he was not home to see the publicized reminders (such as they are) in the weeks before the deadline.

With that deadline a full three weeks before the election, it’s too common for the busy student to become disenfranchised. The Globe’s March 1 editorial supporting automatic voter registration (“Government by the people needs all the people’’) offers a needed remedy to this problem. The Legislature should follow the lead of Oregon and California, reforming our voting system to make automatic voter registration the law of the land here in the Commonwealth.

Ian Barber

The writer is a senior at Lesley University and a policy intern at MASSPIRG.