Voter Registration Policy: Impact and Potential for Equity
Authors: Kelly Siegel-Stechler, Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg
Contributors: Peter de Guzman, Kelly Beadle
In the past two decades, voter registration policies have changed to provide more options for citizens to register to vote through state elections websites, automatically through interactions with state agencies, on the day of elections or early voting, and before they turn 18 years of age. Despite these expansions in the methods available for citizens to register to vote, voter registration has remained a significant
barrier to participation for young voters and voters from historically underrepresented backgrounds.
In this study, we sought to evaluate the extent to which expansions in voter registration policies in recent years have impacted voter registration and turnout in the United States, especially among young voters and racial or ethnic minority voters.
Using a nationally representative voter file sample and an analysis of state-level policies, we conducted an empirical, multi-level analysis to estimate the potential impacts of expanded voter registration policies (specifically Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), Online Voter Registration (OVR), Same-Day Voter Registration (SDR), and pre-registration of youth before they turn 18 (pre-reg) on voter registration and
turnout while controlling for both individual and contextual state- and county-level factors that are known to impact voting behavior.
Summary of Findings
Our analysis revealed:
- The association between the election laws we examined, registration, and voting remains significant in specific communities of interest (youth and people of color) after controlling for state- and county-level factors, but not in the general population. This suggests that these policies may benefit historically under-mobilized communities.
- However, when we look at subgroups of interest, there are significant relationships between policy and outcomes. For youth, Same-Day Registration is positively associated with voting, but negatively associated with registration, which may indicate that SDR is supporting those voters most susceptible to being dropped from the rolls. OVR is associated with higher registration rates among youth and negatively associated with turnout. This suggests that while OVR makes registration more accessible to young people, it is not mobilizing them to get to the polls.
- For people of color, we see a similar negative relationship between SDR and registration, which again may mean that the most vulnerable parts of the population are not staying on the rolls between elections. While these findings are somewhat complex to parse, they do offer some initial evidence for the role that expansive registration policies can play in reaching traditionally underrepresented voters and merit further study.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Overall, our analysis underscores that policy alone (and certainly not any single policy) is not a silver bullet for closing gaps in civic participation due to historic barriers and disenfranchisement. Policy is an important mechanism for beginning to curtail the systemic underpinnings of political inequities, but they cannot close historic deficits alone. They must be complemented by effective programming to register and turn out voters.
There is promise in getting voters on the rolls with policies that ease voter registration like OVR and AVR, but that does not seem to translate to voting on its own. This could be due to voting barriers, or because these new registrants who lack a vote history are often considered low-propensity voters are not being communicated with by organizations or campaigns. As such, Election-Day policies that address issues of polling place accessibility may be an important complement to facilitative registration policies.
Additionally, the need to maintain active registration among highly mobile populations still necessitates ongoing registration activity or mobilization pushes in SDR states. While emergent facilitative policies may not be a panacea for addressing the inequities of place-based voter registration, they do appear to be an important component of addressing longstanding gaps in electoral equity and facilitating democratic participation.
