Voter registration in the United States

A group of African-American children gather around a sign and booth to register voters. Early 1960s.

Voter registration in the United States takes place at the county level, and is a prerequisite to voting at federal, state and local elections. The only exception is North Dakota, which does not require registration, although North Dakota law allows cities to register voters for city elections.^[1][2] The majority of states set cutoff dates for voter registration, ranging from 2 to 4 weeks before an election; while some have Election Day or "same-day" voter registration which enables eligible citizens to register or update their registration when they arrive to vote.

It has been argued that some registration requirements deter some people (especially disadvantaged people) from registering and therefore exercising their right to vote, resulting in a lower voter turnout. According to a 2012 study, 24% of the voting-eligible population in the United States are not registered to vote, equaling some 51 million U.S. citizens. While voters traditionally had to register at government offices by a certain period of time before an election, in the mid-1990s, the federal government made efforts to facilitate registering, in an attempt to increase turnout. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (the "Motor Voter" law) now requires state governments to either provide uniform opt-in registration services through drivers' license registration centers, disability centers, schools, libraries, and mail-in registration, or to allow Election Day voter registration, where voters can register at polling places immediately prior to voting. In 2016, Oregon became the first state to make voter registration fully automatic (opt-out) when issuing driver licenses and ID cards, since followed by four more states. Political parties and other organizations sometimes hold voter registration drives to register new voters.

In most states, persons registering to vote may at the same time declare an affiliation with a political party.^[3]

Federal jurisdiction

While the federal government has jurisdiction over federal elections, most election laws are decided at the state level. The United States Constitution prohibits states from restricting voting rights in ways that infringe on a person's right to equal protection under the law (14th Amendment), on the basis of race (15th Amendment), on the basis of sex (19th Amendment), on the basis of having failed to pay a poll tax or any tax (24th Amendment), or on the basis of age for persons age 18 and older (26th Amendment). The administration of elections, however, vary widely across jurisdictions.

Only US citizens have the right to vote in federal elections.^[4] In a few cases, permanent residents ("green card" holders) have registered to vote and have cast ballots without realizing that doing so was illegal. Non-citizens convicted in criminal court of having made a false claim of citizenship for the purpose of registering to vote in a federal election can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year. Deportation and removal proceedings have resulted from several such cases.^[5] Some states prohibit convicted felons from voting, a practice known as felony disenfranchisement. Of these states, some prohibit voting only during parole or probation but allow voting after. A small number of states may require repeat offenders to have their voting rights restored through court action.^[6]

Effect on participation

A 2012 study by The Pew Charitable Trusts estimates that 24% of the voting-eligible population in the United States are not registered to vote, a percentage that represents "at least 51 million eligible U.S. citizens."^[7][8] the study suggests that registration requirements contribute to discouraging people from exercising their right to vote, thereby causing a lower voter turnout. The extent of discouragement and its effect on increasing the socioeconomic bias of the electorate however remain contested.

In a 1980 landmark study, Raymond E. Wolfinger and Steven J. Rosenstone came to the conclusion that less restrictive registration requirements would substantially increase the electoral turnout. According to their probit analysis, if all states adopted the procedures of the most permissive state regulations, which would mean:

1. eliminating the closing date
2. opening registration offices during the forty-hour work week
3. opening registration offices in the evening or on Saturday
4. permitting absentee registration for the sick, disabled and absent

(p 73) turnout in the 1972 presidential election would have been 9.1% higher, with 12.2 million additional people having voted.^[9] In a seminal 1988 book, sociologists Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven argued that lowering registration requirements would improve socioeconomic equality in the composition of the electorate.^[10]

Findings such as this have inspired lawmakers to facilitate the registration process, eventually leading to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (or "Motor Voter" act) that required states to allow voter registration at various public offices, including drivers' license registration centers, disability centers, schools, libraries, as well as mail-in registration, unless a state adopts Election Day voter registration. The way towards passing this piece of federal legislation was however lengthy and rocky, as these reforms were highly contested. In an expanded 1990 edition of their 1988 book, titled "Why Americans still don't vote: and why politicians want it that way," Cloward and Piven argued that the reforms were expected to encourage less-privileged groups which happen to lean towards the Democratic Party.^[11]

While the turnout at federal elections did substantially increase following the electoral reforms, the effect fell short of Wolfinger and Rosenstone's expectations while Cloward's and Piven's hope of improving the demographic representativeness of the electorate wasn't fulfilled at all. Political scientist Adam Berinsky concluded in a 2005 article that the reforms designed to make voting "easier" in their entirety had an opposite effect, actually increasing the preexisting socioeconomic biases by ensuring "that those citizens who are most engaged with the political world – those with politically relevant resources – continue to participate, whereas those individuals without such resources fall by the wayside."^[12] As Berinsky reaffirms in a 2016 piece, the only way to increase turnout while improving representativeness, is making more people become interested in politics.^[13]

Forms of facilitation

Registration centers

Traditionally, voters have had to register at government offices to vote, but in 1993 Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as the "Motor Voter" law, which came into effect on January 1, 1995, to make registering easier, in an attempt to increase turnout. The Act requires state governments to provide opt-in registration services through drivers' license registration centers, disability centers, schools, libraries, and mail-in registration, though the States which since March 11, 1993, have not required voter registration for federal elections or had same-day voter registration on Election Day were exempt from the Act. Six states qualify for the exemption: North Dakota (which does not have registration), Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Online registration

An increasing number of states allow online voter registration. As of May 9, 2016 the states that have online registration are:^[14]

State	Year Enacted	Bill Number	Year Implemented	Website
Alabama	n/a	No legislation required	2016	Alabama Votes
Alaska	n/a	No legislation required	2015	Alaska Online Voter Registration
Arizona	n/a	No legislation required	2002	EZ Voter Registration
California	2011	SB 397	2012	California Online Voter Registration
Colorado	2009	HB 1160	2010	Go Vote Colorado
Connecticut	2012	HB 5024	2014	Connecticut Online Voter Registration
Delaware	n/a	No legislation required	2014	I Vote Delaware
District of Columbia	2014	B20-0264	2015	District of Columbia Online Voter Registration
Florida	2015	SB 228	n/a	Not implemented yet
Georgia	2012	SB 92	2014	Georgia Online Voter Registration
Hawaii	2012	HB 1755	2015	Hawaii Online Voter Registration
Idaho	2016	SB 1297	n/a	Not implemented yet
Illinois	2013	HB 2418	2014	Illinois Online Voter Registration
Indiana	2009	HB 1346	2010	Indiana Online Voter Registration
Iowa	n/a	No legislation required	2016	Iowa Online Voter Registration
Kansas	n/a	No legislation required	2009	Kansas Online Voter Registration
Kentucky	n/a	No legislation required	2016	Kentucky Online Voter Registration
Louisiana	2009	HB 520	2010	Geaux Vote
Maryland	2011	HB 740	2012	Maryland Online Voter Registration
Massachusetts	2014	HB 3788	2015	Massachusetts Online Voter Registration
Minnesota [lower-alpha 1]	2014	HF 2096	2013	MN Votes
Missouri [lower-alpha 2]	n/a	No legislation required	2014	Vote Missouri
Nebraska	2014	LB 661	2015	Nebraska Online Voter Registration
Nevada	2011	AB 82	2012	Nevada Online Voter Registration
New Mexico	2015	SB 643	2016	New Mexico Online Voter Registration
New York [lower-alpha 3]	n/a	No legislation required	2011	New York Electronic Voter Registration
Oklahoma	2015	SB 313	n/a	Not implemented yet
Oregon	2009	HB 2386	2010	OreStar
Pennsylvania	n/a	No legislation required	2015	PA Online Voter Registration
Rhode Island	2016	SB 2513	n/a	Not implemented yet
South Carolina	2012	HB 4945	2012	S.C. Online Voter Registration
Tennessee	2016	SB1626/HB1472	n/a	Not implemented yet
Utah	2009	SB 25	2010	Utah Online Voter Registration
Vermont	n/a	No legislation required	2015	Vermont Online Voter Registration
Virginia	2013	HB 2341	2013	Virginia Voter Registration
Washington	2007	HB 1528	2008	MyVote
West Virginia	2013	SB 477	2015	West Virginia Online Voter Registration
Wisconsin	2016	SB 295	n/a	Not implemented yet

1. Minnesota in 2013 made online voter registration available without enabling legislation but the legislature in 2014 authorized the state's system.
2. In Missouri, a person can register to vote online and electronically provide a signature using a mobile device, tablet computer or touchscreen computer, but not a standard desktop computer. The state reviews the information and prints out the registration form, which it sends to the person's local elections office for verification.
3. In New York, the registration system is not fully paperless. Voters can submit a voter registration application online, through a system run by the Department of Motor Vehicles, but paper is exchanged between the motor vehicle system and the statewide database. This creates a paperless experience from the voter's perspective, but administrative processes are still paper-based.

Automatic registration

From January 1, 2016, Oregon implemented the Motor Voter Act, a fully automatic (opt out) voter registration system tied into the process of issuing driver licenses and ID cards.^[15] By April 2016 three more states - California, West Virginia, and Vermont - followed suit, and in May 2016 Connecticut implemented it administratively rather than by legislation, bringing the number of states with automatic voter registration to five.^[16][17] Several more states have since considered legislation for automatic registration.^[18]

Election Day voter registration

The majority of states require voters to register 2 to 4 weeks before an election, with cutoff dates varying from 30 to 15 days.

Some states allow Election Day voter registration (also known as EDR) which enables eligible citizens to register to vote or update their registration when they arrive to vote. Some states call the procedure same-day registration (SDR) because voters can register and vote during an earlier voting period before Election Day.

EDR allows eligible citizens to register or update their registration at the polls or their local election office by showing valid identification to a poll worker or election official, who checks the identification, consults the registration list and, if they are not registered or the registration is out of date, registers them on the spot.

Five states are exempt from the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 because they have continuously since 1993 had EDR: Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Maine lost the exemption when it abolished EDR in 2011, though it was subsequently restored. North Dakota is also exempt because it does not have a registration requirement. Other states which have adopted some form of EDR include Colorado (2014), Connecticut (2012), Illinois (2015), Iowa (2008), Maine (1973), Montana (2006), and Washington DC. Connecticut and California both implemented EDR in 2012 and Connecticut started EDR with its municipal elections in 2013. Rhode Island has EDR for presidential elections. California will start in 2015 or once it has implemented its statewide voter registration database. In 2015, Vermont will implement EDR in 2017, and Hawaii will do so in 2018. In June 2011, Maine abolished EDR, which had been in place since 1973, and abolishing absentee voting during the two business days before an election.^[19] However, the stipulation banning EDR was overturned in a November 2011 citizen referendum ("people's veto") titled Question 1,^[20] when Maine voters reinstated EDR with 59% in favor.^[21]

Voter turnout is much higher in states using EDR than in states that do not. A 2013 report analyzing turnout in the 2012 United States Presidential election, had SDR states averaging at a turnout of 71%, well above the average voter turn-out rate of 59% for non-SDR states.^[22] According to official turnout data report in the 2014 edition of America Goes to the Polls, voter turnout in EDR states has averaged 10–14 percent higher than states that lack that option.^[23] Research suggests that EDR increases turnout between three and fourteen percentage points.^{[24][25][26][27][28]} A 2004 study summarizes the impact of EDR on voter turnout as “about five percentage points”.^[29]

Voter registration drives

Political parties and other organizations sometimes hold voter registration drives, organized efforts to register groups of new voters.

In the 2004 case Charles H. Wesley Education Foundation v. Cathy Cox (Wesley v. Cox), it was held that private entities have a right, under the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993, to engage in voter registration drives in Georgia (whose law required registration drives to be pre-cleared by the government agency) at times and locations of their choosing, without the presence or permission of state or local election officials.^[30]

Party affiliation

Many states allow persons registering to vote to declare at the same time an affiliation with a political party.^[3] This declaration of affiliation does not cost money, and does not make the person a dues-paying member of a party. A party cannot prevent a voter from declaring his or her affiliation with them, but it can refuse requests for full membership. In some states, only voters affiliated with a party may vote in that party's primary elections, which are then called closed primaries.^[31] However, in a general election voters are free to vote for any candidate on the ballot, regardless of their declared affiliation. Declaring a party affiliation is never compulsary and the option also exists to declare oneself "independent".

Some states do not allow for simultaneous registration of party affiliation, including Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington.^[31]

See also

• Voter ID laws in the United States

References

1. http://votesmart.org/elections/voter-registration/ND#.WCFO5NxXQSQ
2. Secretary of State North Dakota. "Voter Registration in North Dakota". Retrieved 4 August 2010.
3. Navigating Election Day: What Every Voter Needs To Know, Before You Vote
4. "The Right to Vote". United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Retrieved 25 October 2011.
5. Kirk Semple, ""Immigrants Find Voting Can Come At a Cost". New York Times, 15 October 2010.
6. "Felon Voting Rights". ncsl.org.
7. "Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient: Evidence That America's Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade" (PDF). The Pew Charitable Trusts. February 2012. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
8. "Make It Easy: The Case for Automatic Registration". Democracy (journal). 2013. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
9. Raymond E. Wolfinger and; Steven J. Rosenstone (1980). Who Votes?. Yale University Press. pp. 73; 78. ISBN 0-300-02552-1.
10. Frances Fox Piven; Richard A. Cloward (1988). Why Americans don't vote. Random House. ISBN 0394553969.
11. Toby S. James (2012). Elite Statecraft and Election Administration: Bending the Rules of the Game?. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-30842-8.
12. Adam Berinsky (July 2015). "The perverse consequences of electoral reform in the United States" (PDF). American Politics Research. 33 (4): 471–491. doi:10.1177/1532673X04269419.
13. Adam Berinsky (February 8, 2016). "Making Voting Easier Doesn't Increase Turnout". Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved April 7, 2016.
14. The National Conference of State Legislatures
15. Oregon Motor Voter Act FAQ
16. "Automatic Voter Registration". Brennan Center for Justice. 2016-04-01. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
17. "Shumlin signs into law automatic voter registration". Vermont Business Magazine. 2016-04-28. Retrieved 2016-04-28.
18. "Automatic Voter Registration". Brennan Center for Justice. Retrieved 12 May 2016.
19. June 11, 2011,Bill to end same-day registration approved Portland Press Herald
20. August 14, 2011, Citizens rise up in Maine Boston Globe
21. November 8,2011, Huff Post Politics, Maine Election Day Registration Restored By Voters
22. Timpe, Brenden (2013-03-14). "New Report: Higher Voter Turnout Linked to SDR". Demos (U.S. think tank). Retrieved 2013-05-29.
23. Pillsbury, George; Johannesen, Julian (March 2015). "America Goes to the Polls 2014" (PDF). http://www.nonprofitvote.org/. Nonprofit VOTE. External link in |website= (help)
24. Brians, Craig Leonard; Grofman, Bernard (2001-03-01). "Election Day Registration's Effect on U.S. Voter Turnout". Social Science Quarterly. 82 (1): 170–183. doi:10.1111/0038-4941.00015. ISSN 1540-6237.
25. Rhine, Staci L. (1996-01-01). "An Analysis of the Impact of Registration Factors on Turnout in 1992". Political Behavior. 18 (2): 171–185. JSTOR 586605.
26. Ansolabehere, Stephen; Konisky, David M. (2006-12-21). "The Introduction of Voter Registration and Its Effect on Turnout". Political Analysis. 14 (1): 83–100. doi:10.1093/pan/mpi034. ISSN 1047-1987.
27. Burden, Barry C.; Canon, David T.; Mayer, Kenneth R.; Moynihan, Donald P. (2014-01-01). "Election Laws, Mobilization, and Turnout: The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform". American Journal of Political Science. 58 (1): 95–109. doi:10.1111/ajps.12063. ISSN 1540-5907.
28. Neiheisel, Jacob R.; Burden, Barry C. (2012-07-01). "The Impact of Election Day Registration on Voter Turnout and Election Outcomes". American Politics Research. 40 (4): 636–664. doi:10.1177/1532673X11432470. ISSN 1532-673X.
29. Highton, Benjamin (2004-09-01). "Voter Registration and Turnout in the United States". Perspectives on Politics. 2 (03): 507–515. doi:10.1017/S1537592704040307. ISSN 1541-0986.
30. Cox Violated Voter Rights, Judge Declares
31. "Voter Registration Resources". Project Vote Smart. Retrieved 23 January 2015.