The Effect of Registration Laws on Voter Turnout

1978 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Rosenstone ◽  
Raymond E. Wolfinger
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Population Survey ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Voter Registration ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Registration Laws ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
State Registration ◽  
The Impact

After the drastic relaxation of voter registration requirements in the 1960s, do present state laws keep people away from the polls? More specifically, which provisions have how much effect on what kinds of people? We have answered these questions with data from the Current Population Survey conducted by the Census Bureau in November 1972.State registration laws reduced turnout in the 1972 presidential election by about nine percentage points. The impact of the laws was heaviest in the South and on less educated people of both races. Early deadlines for registration and limited registration office hours were the biggest impediments to turnout.Contrary to expectations, changing these requirements would not substantially alter the character of the electorate. The voting population would be faintly less affluent and educated; the biggest difference would be a matter of one or two percentage points. In strictly political terms, the change would be even fainter–a gain for the Democrats of less than half a percent.

scholarly journals The Introduction of Voter Registration and Its Effect on Turnout

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Ansolabehere ◽  
David M. Konisky
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Voter Registration ◽  
Voter Participation ◽  
Participation Rates ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Registration Laws ◽  
Panel Estimates

Studies of voter turnout across states find that those with more facilitative registration laws have higher turnout rates. Eliminating registration barriers altogether is estimated to raise voter participation rates by up to 10%. This article presents panel estimates of the effects of introducing registration that exploits changes in registration laws and turnout within states. New York and Ohio imposed registration requirements on all of their counties in 1965 and 1977, respectively. We find that the introduction of registration to counties that did not previously require registration decreased participation over the long term by three to five percentage points. Though significant, this is lower than estimates of the effects of registration from cross-sectional studies and suggests that expectations about the effects of registration reforms on turnout may be overstated.

Measuring the Impact of COVID-19 on Businesses and People: Lessons from the Census Bureau’s Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 312-316
Author(s):  
Catherine Buffington ◽  
Jason Fields ◽  
Lucia Foster
Keyword(s):  
Current Population Survey ◽  
Population Survey ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Community Survey ◽  
American Community Survey ◽  
Annual Business ◽  
Data Products ◽  
Business Survey ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Existing Data

We provide an overview of Census Bureau activities to enhance the consistency, timeliness, and relevance of our data products in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight new data products designed to provide timely and granular information on the pandemic's impact: the Small Business Pulse Survey, weekly Business Formation Statistics, the Household Pulse Survey, and Community Resilience Estimates. We describe pandemic-related content introduced to existing surveys such as the Annual Business Survey and the Current Population Survey. We discuss adaptations to ensure the continuity and consistency of existing data products such as principal economic indicators and the American Community Survey.

Residential Mobility and Voter Turnout

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peverill Squire ◽  
Raymond E. Wolfinger ◽  
David P. Glass
Keyword(s):  
Residential Mobility ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Large Impact ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
The Impact

We examine the characteristics of a largely ignored low-turnout group—people who have recently moved. We find that neither demographic nor attitudinal attributes explain their lower turnout. Instead, the requirement that citizens must register anew after each change in residence constitutes the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls. Since nearly one-third of the nation moves every two years, moving has a large impact on national turnout rates. We offer a proposal to reduce the effect of residential mobility on turnout and estimate that turnout would increase by nine percentage points if the impact of moving could be removed. The partisan consequences of such a change would be marginal.

The Impact of State Television on Voter Turnout

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 257-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rune J. Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Level Data ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Tv ◽  
Election Studies ◽  
The Impact

In an influential study, Matthew Gentzkow found that the introduction of TV in the United States caused a major drop in voter turnout. In contrast, the current analysis shows that public broadcasting TV can increase political participation. Detailed data on the rollout of television in Norway in the 1960s and 1970s are combined with municipality-level data on voter turnout over a period of four decades. The date of access to TV signals was mostly a side effect of geography, a feature that is used to identify causal effects. Additional analyses exploit individual-level panel data from three successive election studies. The new TV medium instantly became a major source of political information. It triggered political interest and caused a modest, but statistically significant, increase in voter turnout.

scholarly journals Explaining Turnout Decline in Post-Communist Countries: The Impact of Migration

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-60
Author(s):  
Mircea Comşa
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Multivariate Regression ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
The Impact ◽  
New Hypothesis ◽  
External Migration

Abstract Turnout decline in former communist countries has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. In this paper, I re-test some of the previous hypotheses on new data and I propose a new hypothesis that considers the impact of external migration. Using multivariate regression models on a dataset of 272 presidential and parliamentary elections held in 30 post-communist countries between 1989 and 2012, I have found strong support for the “migration hypothesis”: other things being equal, an increase of migration rate by 1 percentage point reduces voter turnout by around 0.4 percentage points. Most of the previous hypotheses related to causes of turnout decline are supported too.

PRIORITIZING SIDEWALK UPGRADE PROJECTS TO MAXIMIZE COMPLIANCE WITH ACCESSIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayman Halabya ◽  
Khaled El-Rayes
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Transition Plans ◽  
Full Compliance ◽  
Transition Plan ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Impact

People with disabilities form 18.7% of the United States population, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2012. To avoid discrimination against this significant portion of the population, state and local governments are required by federal and state laws to provide and maintain accessibility for people with disabilities on their sidewalks and pedestrian facilities. To achieve compliance with these laws, state and local governments need to conduct self-evaluations to identify inaccessible pedestrian facilities and develop transition plans to schedule upgrade projects for these inaccessible pedestrian facilities. The federally-mandated transition plan requirements include the development of a schedule that displays, in detail, deadlines for all upgrade projects needed to achieve full compliance with accessibility requirements. To prepare this schedule, public entities are required to rank and prioritize pedestrian facilities upgrade projects. This paper presents the development of a novel methodology to quantify the impact of upgrading inaccessible pedestrian facilities on people with disabilities. The developed methodology considers several factors related to pedestrian facilities’ conditions and location to estimate the number of expected pedestrians with disabilities impacted by upgrading each inaccessible pedestrian facility. This methodology is designed to assist decision makers in state and local governments in the process of ranking and prioritizing inaccessible pedestrian facilities upgrade projects.

Election Administration and the Pure Effect of Voter Registration on Turnout

2011 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry C. Burden ◽  
Jacob R. Neiheisel
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Voter Registration ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Closing Date ◽  
Election Administration ◽  
Administrative Capacity ◽  
Local Election ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Negative Effect

Voter registration is thought to have a substantial negative effect on American voter turnout. The authors clarify this understanding in two ways. First, using a natural experiment in Wisconsin, they estimate the pure effect of registration, stripped of aspects such as the closing date. Registration lowers turnout by about 2 percentage points. Second, the authors argue that administrative capacities of local election officials are important moderators of how much registration affects turnout. Municipalities with less capacity are associated with bigger decreases in turnout. Researchers and policy makers should consider administrative capacity as a component in the equal application of voting laws.

The Effects of Registration Laws on Voter Turnout

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew R. Knee ◽  
Donald P. Green
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Statistical Models ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Closing Date ◽  
Registration Laws ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Over Time

This chapter uses new data and more up-to-date statistical models to reevaluate the effects of closing date and Election Day registration (EDR) on voter turnout. It discusses alternative modeling strategies of registration deadlines and takes a fresh look at the impact of closing dates and EDR during the period 1980–2006. In particular, the chapter explores the consequences of changing the analytic focus from cross-sectional comparisons of different states at a given point in time to cross-temporal comparisons of each state over time. In comparison to earlier studies, this chapter suggests that closing dates and Election Day registration have limited effects on turnout.

The Politics of Policy: The Initial Mass Political Effects of Medicaid Expansion in the States

2017 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSHUA D. CLINTON ◽  
MICHAEL W. SANCES
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Voter Registration ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Patient Protection ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
State Variation ◽  
States Experience ◽  
The Impact

Whether public policy affects electoral politics is an enduring question with an elusive answer. We identify the impact of the highly contested Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 by exploiting cross-state variation created by the 2012 Supreme Court decision inNational Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. We compare changes in registration and turnout following the expansion of Medicaid in January of 2014 to show that counties in expansion states experience higher political participation compared to similar counties in nonexpansion states. Importantly, the increases we identify are concentrated in counties with the largest percentage of eligible beneficiaries. The effect on voter registration persists through the 2016 election, but an impact on voter turnout is only evident in 2014. Despite the partisan politics surrounding the ACA–a political environment that differs markedly from social programs producing policy feedbacks in the past—our evidence is broadly consistent with claims that social policy programs can produce some political impacts, at least in the short-term.

How Postregistration Laws Affect the Turnout of Citizens Registered to Vote

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond E. Wolfinger ◽  
Benjamin Highton ◽  
Megan Mullin
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
African American ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Current Population Survey ◽  
Population Survey ◽  
High School Dropouts ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Voter Registration ◽  
School Dropouts ◽  
Percentage Points

A well-established scholarly tradition links lower voting costs with higher turnout. Whereas previous research emphasized the costs imposed by requiring voter registration, our research assesses postregistration costs and state policies that can make it easier for registered citizens to vote. These policies include mailing each registrant a sample ballot and information about the location of his or her polling place, providing a longer voting day, and requiring firms to give their employees time off to vote. Using the 2000 Voter Supplement to the Current Population Survey, we find that all but the last of these provisions enhance turnout, especially by the young and the less educated. Compared to a state that does none of these things, the estimated turnout of high school dropouts is nearly 11 percentage points higher in a state with these “best practices”; their effect on young registrants is nearly 10 points. Because African American and Latino registrants are disproportionately younger and less educated, they would benefit disproportionately from universal adoption of such postregistration laws. We estimate that if every state adopted these best practices, overall turnout of those registered would increase approximately three percentage points.

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