FairVote Feed: Voter Preregistration

America's Young Voters: Who They Are and Why They Matter

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:33:41 -0800

Key Facts on Young Voters and Voter Turnout:

-In 2010, 24% of eligible young voters ages 18-29 voted in midterm elections

-85% of young adults who voted in 2010 also voted in 2008

-Voter turnout among youth ages 18-29 was 51% in 2008

-In 2008, 62% of youth voters with a college education voted, compared to 36% of those youth without a college education

Younger voters are an important and necessary portion of the electorate. They hold the key to the future of the country. Collectively, young voters represent a special voice overflowing with new ideas, solutions, and ways of looking at situations differently. They have recently come into the fold of the electoral process, and are getting their bearings in an electoral world that may be very foreign to them. Young voters should have a system of support where they are given guidance on what it means to be a voter, feel meaningful in the political process, and believing they are no less adequate in offering their opinions just because they are younger and may have less experience as a voter.

Today’s youth, or the Millennial Generation, are the current 18-29 year-olds. They are a group that is very service oriented, and while sometimes being labeled the “instant gratification” generation, this generation takes pride in seeing the immediate appreciation from others as a result of their community service. Some Millennials, like many other Americans, are angry with political officials and as a result, less are choosing to take government office positions. They have been increasingly shown to take jobs in the service sector, such as the Peace Corps and Teach for America. Despite their frustration, the country has seen an increase in voter turnout from young voters.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, from 1964-2004, 18-24 year-olds had an average voting rate of 41.8%, while voters age 45-64 voted at 69.3% and those 65 and older voted at 66.6%. Youth voters have been quite underrepresented in elections.

From 2000-2004, turnout rates among the youth increased by 4.3 million votes, and during the 2006 off-year election, there were 1.9 million more young voters than there had been in 2002. In 2008, 36% of young voters with no college experience voted in the presidential election, compared to 62% of young voters with college experience. A 10% increase was seen among young voters that lived in areas where information was mailed about sample ballots, polling places and extended hours.

Yet in the 2010 midterm elections, the youth vote dropped 28 points (24%) below the unprecedented 2008 presidential election turnout rate. Voter turnout in the 2010 midterms was 24% for voters age 18-29, and 51% for all voters over the age of 30.

When young voter turnout is low, it decreases accountability of elected government officials, decreases the quality of discourse in the community and through the media, and decreases opportunities to have full representation or elected leaders working for the interests of the youth in government.

These negative effects can be reversed, at least in part, by increasing civic learning. A national study has shown that two-thirds of all American students received a score below “proficient” on their national assessment of civics. Those students who receive an in depth education of civics are much more likely to understand public issues, and the importance of participating in the electoral process as a way of addressing those issues within a community. Civic understanding is not an inherent understanding that youth should automatically know. Like math, science, or many other social values, it must be taught. Whether in the home or at school, the way to preserve the practice of democracy starts by teaching it to future generations.

The strength of our democracy depends on all voters participating. The government directly or indirectly influences almost every aspect of our lives. From the water we drink in our schools, to the food that is on the shelves in our grocery stores, it affects us. The youth cannot be forgotten about, but rather should be built up to be successful voters.

Politicians will never know how you voted, but they will know you voted. Even if your vote does not decide the election, adding one more vote to the overall youth vote will add up and it does matter. If groups of youth voters show up, politicians will know that the youth are not to be ignored. Currently, politicians can afford to overlook the wants and needs of youth voters because they do not show up to the polls, and they know the youth vote will not vote them out of office if they fail to address issues that matter to young voters. That, matters. Your vote counts.

Modernizing Voter Registration: An Overview of the American Enterprise Institute Conference

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:26:44 -0700

The American Enterprise Institute held a conference on September 19th discussing the ways in which states currently handle voter registration and ways to improve it. Two groups of electoral reform experts, each with three panelists, plunged into discourse regarding the complications of current voter registration systems and possible solutions to ameliorate how citizens go about registering to vote.

A few key points were made clear about why voter registration is even necessary. Looking back on the history of elections, there once was a time when elections were more or less debates over the candidates, and eligible voters able to participate cast their vote by orally stating the candidate they supported. This method of voting was prone to be rigged with fraud, intimidation to vote for a specific candidate, and even riots, as there was no way to ensure that only those people who met the requirements to vote were the ones actually voting. Voter registration was introduced in part as a way to validate eligible voters while also keeping those who were not eligible away from the polls.

Maintaining accurate registration rolls has been a difficult task for many states. For example, it is easy to look at the way European countries handle voter registration and question why the U.S. does not share in the same success stories as Europe— having significantly higher rates of citizens registered to vote and lower rates of errors in the voter rolls.

One reason is that the United States is unique in having such an extremely mobile population. As stated by Charles Stewart III, professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, within a four year time span, 85 million people move throughout the United States, with 45 million changes of address. That is a lot of people to track, and with each state having its own regulations about voter registration, citizens may not be informed about that information and may be unaware that they must update their voter registration in compliance with the laws of the new state in which they reside.

Accompanying this burden of citizens taking the initiative to keep their voter registration up to date is poor record-keeping by some states. Since the 2000 presidential election especially, states have been much more cautious about purging voters from the rolls in order to avoid accidentally getting rid of voters who are still eligible.

The Director of Elections for the state of Ohio, Matthew Damschroder, highlighted three problems that hurt state Board of Elections the most.

•First, most of the country still relies on paper-based methods of registration forms. –This brings the complication of trying to read the hand-writing of citizens. If an election official entering the registration information into the computer system cannot read the hand-writing, and inputs a misspelled name, for example, this can cause major problems when that voter shows up to vote on Election Day.

•Second, registration information is unverifiable by the voter.—Often times, citizens send off their registration form and simply hope for the best. It is not standard practice in every state to have citizens verify that the information election commissions have in their system is in fact correct.

•Third, the current registration system is dependent on “third parties” (not political parties, but independent associations).—People from various organizations get eligible voters to fill out registration forms that those third parties will then drop off to election boards for the applicant. This is not always reliable. In Ohio, a woman working for a third party entity had five-hundred registration forms sitting in the back seat of her car, along with her laptop. When her car was broken into, the thief not only stole her laptop, but made off with the registration forms as well, seemingly useless items that were then discarded in a dumpster. The registration forms were found the day after the registration deadline, and hundreds of eligible citizens who thought they were registered showed up on Election Day to find out that they in fact were not, thus losing their ability to vote.

In light of the many factors like these that signal a registration system in distress, there is some hope to having a better voter registration system. The Pew Center on the States announced a new approach to reforming the registration system. Pew brought together 42 technical experts, academics, and election officials from 21 states to produce a plan for better handling voter registration. The result was the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, where data on people who may be a new voter or may be moving can easily be shared between states. ERIC would allow states to update records on existing voters and get rid of duplicate and invalid records from state files.

Here’s a reminder about FairVote’s stance on modernizing voter registration. We believe:

States should establish means to automatically place eligible voters on registration rolls, ideally based on a unique national government identifier- a kind of “Democracy Passport.”

The federal government should establish minimum standards that all states must meet to ensure all eligible voters are registered and that provide a means to establish a more nationally coherent voter roll.

States should establish a standard pre-registration age of 16, actively (and perhaps automatically) registering citizens in their high schools and at the DMV in conjunction with a voting curriculum that will prepare first-time voters to vote as soon as they turn 18 years old.

To learn more about FairVote’s position on voter registration visit Universal Voter Registration, and click here to watch the full broadcast of AEI’s Bringing Voter Registration into the 21st Century conference.

American way of registering voters: everything but universal, and far from being efficient

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:41:43 -0800

89.31% of the Voting Age Population is registered to vote in Canada, and 97.2% in Sweden. In contrast, in the USA, one third of voters of voters are left behind- even in such a critical and vibrant election as this one. Indeed, the US system of voter registration ("self-initiated system"), which puts the burden of registration exclusively on the voter, not on the government, very often acts as a barrier to political participation and turnout. Because registration is voluntary, this system requires citizen initiative and thus tends to leave out many who would otherwise be eligible to vote. In fact, many eligible voters may be unable to register (women with small children, those without easy access to transportation, people who have a job with busy schedule, students�) or simply forget to do it...Thus the voter registration system may partly explain why the United States ranks 140 out of 163 countries based on turnout of the voting age population since 1990, according to experts who study elections abroad [1]

Another major drawback of this system is the large role left to civic-minded organizations, partisans and religious organizations, that actually increases the risk of election fraud- this phenomenon has been recently highlighted by the ACORN polemic, as it has been during the 2004 elections by partisan organizations in Nevada throwing away voter registration forms filled out by citizens who supported the opposing party. In addition, our voter registration system is to a large extent responsible of the registration rush phenomenon not giving administrators enough time to prepare appropriately for the actual number of voters coming to the polls, which often results in long lines.

In contrast, the Canadian and Swedish systems (as well as most democracies, notably Japan, New Zealand, Italy, Israel, and even Iraq) are "state-initiated" ones: in these countries, the governments consider that they have the responsibility to protect their citizens' constitutional right to vote by ensuring that they are duly registered to vote. Voting is thus protected as a fundamental citizenship right.

Technically, how does it work�? How do, in practical terms, the governments ensure full, accurate and inclusive voting rolls?

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State-initiated voter registration systems may actually take many forms: Italian-style links to national population registers to records of residence maintained by police or local governments, links to application for government services, door-to-door registration campaigns� The solution chosen by both the Canadian and the Swedish election authorities is the formation of partnerships with other government bodies in order to facilitate list-updates. When citizens change their place of residence, they often inform government agencies such as the post office, the tax bureau, the health insurance system� Data-sharing partnerships allow the election authority to receive regular updates of changes to these bodies' files. This makes it possible to update the electoral register without any direct contact between the voter and the election authority.

These partnerships are particularly efficient and useful regarding deletions (voters that no longer qualify: death, criminal conviction�) since this information is often failed to be provided by the individual or his or her family. List maintenance procedures can be designed to incorporate data from sources such as government vital statistics offices, the obituary page in newspapers, funeral homes, courts, health authorities (information on mental incompetence).

For instance, Elections Canada, the Canadian election management body, updates the voter rolls thanks to data provided by Canada Revenue Agency, Canada Post, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and the Local registrars of motor vehicles about changes of adress, citizens turning 18, new citizens and deaths.

In Sweden, the maintenance of a general population register is handled by the local offices of the Swedish Tax Administration. Most information details are provided by other agencies that frequently interact with the public such as the Social insurance offices, municipalities, police�In addition, in a small number of cases (birth, residence, marriage) every individual resident is required by law to provide the local tax office certain info as well as changes of amendments to such recorded info (divorce, change of name, change of residence�). The information contained in the population registration database is shared with other government agencies, including the Swedish Election Authority, on a need basis: for every election, the Swedish electoral authority extracts information from this database to compile an electoral roll for each district (which includes the name, address, place of birth, and marital status of each individual), and then sends proof of registration to each eligible voter.

Indeed, the American way of conducting voter registration and elections is anything but universal, and far from being efficient. Time to catch up! [1]Voter turnout since 1945: a global report. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2002