Changes to Election Laws May Affect Youth Voting in 2024
Authors: Katie Hilton, Alberto Medina
Contributors: Peter de Guzman, Javier Fuentes, Seona Maskara, Jose Velazquez
Highlights
More States Require ID
Fifteen states now have a strict photo-ID requirement, five more than in 2022
Minnesota Facilitates Registration
The state now has pre-registration and automatic registration
Changes to Voting by Mail
Some states made absentee voting easier, while others made it more difficult.
The 2024 general election in the United States will essentially be 51 different elections in each state and Washington, D.C.—each with its own laws governing how and when citizens can register and cast ballots. These policies can have an impact on voter engagement: facilitative election laws may make it easier to participate, while restrictions and requirements can make it harder. They can especially affect young potential voters who often have to learn about our electoral systems, register for the first time, and who are more likely to move to a new state with different laws.
As part of our research into young people’s civic and electoral participation, CIRCLE tracks voting policies across the country and examines the impact they may have on young voters. This analysis updates our state-by-state scan of election laws as of summer 2024 ahead of this November’s presidential election. We also take a fresh look at the evidence for the impact of election laws on youth voting.
About this Policy Scan
This policy scan is a good-faith effort to understand election policies across the United States, which are constantly changing, and often highly detailed, and legally complex. We have done our best to be accurate as of July 2024, but cannot guarantee perfect accuracy or subsequent updates as laws change. In addition, for simplicity, when we say “states” we include Washington, D.C.
By the Numbers
Voter Registration
- 43 states have online voter registration
- 25 states have automatic voter registration
- 25 states have same-day voter registration
- 20 states allow all 16-year-olds to pre-register to vote
Casting A Ballot
- 48 states allow some form of early in-person voting
- 8 states automatically send an absentee ballot to all registered voters, and 29 additional states allow no-excuse absentee voting
- 15 states have a strict photo-ID requirement for voting, four additional states require a non-photo ID
Based on our scan of these and other relevant policies, we calculate a facilitative election law score that quantifies how hard or easy it may be for youth to register and vote in each state. According to our score, the states that make it easiest to participate in elections are: California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia, Washington state, and Washington, D.C.
The states that make it hardest: Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and South Dakota. North Dakota does not require citizens to register to vote, so it does not have any laws related to registration in place.
Changes Since 2022
Several states have made it easier to register and/or cast ballots in 2024 by adopting pro-voter policies since the last national election:
- Minnesota and Pennsylvania implemented automatic voter registration
- Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota now allow all 16-year-olds to pre-register to vote
- Delaware and Montana introduced same-day voter registration
- Connecticut will offer in-person early voting for the first time in 2024
- Alabama, Minnesota, and New Mexico now offer residents the ability to get on a permanent list for receiving absentee ballots
- Iowa eliminated its strict photo-ID law
Other states have introduced new restrictions that could make voting more difficult for some youth:
- Vermont will no longer automatically mail ballots to all registered voters, and Georgia eliminated its permanent absentee ballot list
- Florida, Nebraska, South Carolina, Ohio, and Wyoming introduced new strict photo-ID requirements
Many other states have adopted, or are currently considering, other restrictive measures and policies. These include new ways to challenge voter eligibility in Georgia, new limits to ballot drop boxes and voting hours in Florida, new voter registration drive requirements in Louisiana, and new absentee voting restrictions in Alabama. While we did not track all of these policies, and many are the subject of current legal battles, we acknowledge that their adoption could also harm efforts to register and mobilize young voters.
Impact on Youth Voting
No single election policy is a panacea for increasing youth voter participation, and the impact of pro-voter policies often depends on how well it is implemented and whether there is adequate outreach to youth. That said, in recent cycles, CIRCLE has documented that states with more facilitative election policies tend to have higher youth voter turnout and vice versa.
For example, in 2022, three states (CO, OR, WA) that have had all vote-by-mail elections since 2014 or earlier—were among the top 7 states in youth voter turnout in that midterm election. Two other states, Vermont and Nevada, ranked in the top 15. Notably, as stated above, Vermont will no longer automatically send ballots to registered voters.
On the other hand, three states with some of the lowest 2022 youth voter turnout are notable for their lack of facilitative voting and registration policies. Tennessee (13%), Alabama (15%), and Oklahoma (15%) do not have same-day, automatic, or pre-registration, and only Oklahoma allows no-excuse absentee voting.
We may already be seeing the impact of some positive policies in 2024. In early July, we tracked the number of youth (ages 18-29) already registered to vote in each state and compared it to the number registered in November 2020. Nevada and Michigan led the nation with the highest increase in youth registered to vote since the last Election Day. Both have online, automatic, same-day, and pre-registration.
Policy Spotlights: Prevalence and Impact
Click below to see a map of where each policy has been implemented in time for the 2024 election and what we know about its potential impact
Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) streamlines registration by allowing automatically registering eligible citizens to vote when interacting with another government agency, usually the Department of Motor Vehicles. With the addition of Minnesota and Pennsylvania since 2022, twenty-five states now have some form of AVR.
A CIRCLE analysis of 2020 data showed that, when controlling for factors such as education and income, youth voter registration was 3.5 points higher in states that have AVR. A 2021 study found positive effects on voter registration and turnout among all ages. Other research has found that the voter registration gap between younger (ages 18-24) and older voters decreased in some states with AVR.
Pre-registration is the one facilitative election law aimed specifically at youth: it allows them to register before they turn 18 and be automatically added to the voter rolls once they reach that age. Most states allow 17-year-olds to register to vote if they will be 18 by the general election. For this scan, we include only states that allow pre-registration at age 16, which offers young people even more time and opportunities to take advantage of this policy. Twenty states allow pre-registration at that age; Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota adopted the practice in 2022.
According to a CIRCLE county-level analysis from 2020, youth voter turnout was 9 percentage points higher in counties located in states with pre-registration. Research by other scholars also found evidence for the policy increasing youth voter turnout.
Same-day registration (SDR) allows voters to register and cast a ballot in the same in-person transaction, whether during early voting or on Election Day. This eliminates the potential barrier, reported by many youth, of missing a registration deadline and running out of time to register to vote. With the addition of Delaware and Montana as of 2022, 25 states now allow SDR.
Research suggests that same-day registration is effective at increasing voter turnout among youth ages 18-24 by anywhere between three to seven percentage points—and that the positive effect on turnout is stronger for presidential elections.
As the name implies, online voter registration (OVR) allows citizens to register to vote online as opposed to in-person or via mail. In recent years, a handful of states have improved their systems to allow fully “paperless” registration that does not require the voter to take any additional steps. Forty-three states now have OVR, which makes it one of the most common facilitative election policies in the country.
Previous CIRCLE research found that on average, in 2020, states with OVR had youth voter registration 10 percentage points higher than those without the policy. Among the remaining states without online registration, three (Arkansas, South Dakota, and Texas) were among the bottom-six states for youth voter turnout in 2020.
The laws regarding voter ID can be extremely complex, with provisions about types of identification required or requested, provisional ballots, affidavits, etc. They are also among the laws that change the most: since 2022 alone, more than 10 states made changes to their voter ID laws, underscoring the challenge that can present to voters. Young people, who are less likely to have IDs like driver’s licenses, may be even more likely to be impacted by voter ID laws.
Fifteen states require voters to present a photo ID, and four other states require a non-photo ID. Most of these states allow for voters without an ID to cast a provisional ballot, but many require the voter to subsequently show up with an ID or otherwise validate their identity, adding steps to the voting process.
The research on the effect of these policies is mixed. One 2017 study found that strict voter ID laws depress the turnout of racial/ethnic minority voters. Our analysis of data from the 2016 Survey of the Performance of American Elections found that, among youth who registered but did not vote in 2016, 21% cited issues with voter ID as the reason they did not cast a ballot. Youth of color were twice as likely to cite voter ID issues as a barrier to voting.
Absentee and mail-in voting increased during the 2020 presidential election, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While some states were already conducting all-mail elections or allowing citizens to complete no-excuse absentee voting, others adopted or expanded mail-in voting policies. Some of those states have kept their expanded mail-in voting, though others—like Vermont—have now rolled those policies back.
For the 2024 election, eight states will hold “all-mail” elections and automatically send ballots to all registered voters. Another 29 states will allow no-excuse absentee voting. In the 2020 election, our research showed that the easier a state made it vote by mail, the higher its voter turnout. On average, states that automatically send ballots to all registered voters had 57% voter turnout. States that required an excuse to vote absentee had 42% voter turnout.
