Election Day Registration
Conventional wisdom states that low turnout rates are evidence that young people are less engaged than older Americans in civic life. Yet with high rates of volunteerism and increasing engagement, this is clearly wrong. Something else is going on. As the Brennan Center, Demos, and even Rolling Stone have ably chronicled, young people - particularly students - face high barriers to entry for participating in the political process.
Since the 1970's and 80's, many university towns - particularly small towns in rural areas, where the students vastly outnumber local populations - have actively sought to disenfranchise students. This has taken a variety of forms including closing polling places on campuses, declaring dormitories to be ineligible as a "permanent places of residence," and regulations necessitating that a student's place of residence and drivers license address match - a near impossibility for students. Barriers like these are compounded by a problem that all young people typically face - we are a highly mobile bunch, switching residences, towns, even states from year to year as we jump jobs and apartments.
If we want young people participating in politics, we should work to ensure that the system actually encourages and facilitates that participation. One way to do that is Election Day Registration. To be sure, it won't solve all of the problems I mentioned that prevent young people from voting, but it would be a huge step in the right direction.
In 2006, seven states employed Election Day Registration - Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming. According to Demos (pdf), those seven states consistently see some of the highest rates of turnout in the country (see graph below). In 2006, turnout in EDR states was 48.7% vs. an average of 38.2% in non EDR states.
Switching back to young voters, it is estimated that Election Day Registration could increase youth turnout by as much as 14%. To put that into perspective, the massive turnout increase among young voters that we saw in 2004 represented only an 11% overall increase. If we had EDR in all 50 states, and young voters continued to vote 2-1 in favor of Democrats, we'd likely see a Democratic landslide that would dwarf last year's blue wave.
EDR also solves other structural problems with our system. In non-EDR states, voter registration frequently closes 25 days or more before the polls open. Yet one study found that 40% of all news stories about the midterm elections were aired/printed in the final week of the campaign. A 2000 poll found that while only 59% of people were paying close attention to the election in September, that number rose to 75% in the first week of November (both stats from Demos pdf, original links are dead). Just as reporting on the election, and consequently people's interest in politics, peaks, states without EDR are shutting off any ability of those newly engaged people to join the system. That makes no sense.
As progressives continue to take over state legislatures, we should make Election Day Registration one of our reform priorities.
According to Demos (pdf), as of May 2007, 21 states had an Election Day Registration bill wending through at least one of the state legislative bodies. (19 of those were pro EDR, 2 of those - in Montana and New Hampshire - sought to eliminate EDR.
North Carolina recently took a step in the right direction, passing a same-day registration bill that will allow residents to register to vote up to three days before an election (the previous deadline was 25 days), and cast an early ballot at the time of their registration. Project Vote over at MyDD has an excellent diary on this legislation, and some Republican shenanigans that tried to obstruct the bill's passage.
I'm coming at this problem from the perspective of someone interested in enfranchising more young (and progressive) voters, but there are lots of reasons to do this. But aside from young voters, highly mobile, low-income voters and historically disenfranchised communities are also prime beneficiaries of EDR. All these constituencies are likely to favor Democratic candidates. Beyond the partisanship though, everyone deserves a voice in our democracy, and enabling people to use that voice is just the right thing to do. We should be the change we want to see. EDR will make us a more accountable, and more participatory, democracy. To me, that's a worthwhile goal in and of itself.
Election Resources
Election Day is November 4th - VOTE!
If you encounter trouble at your polling place, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
Voter Registration Deadlines - State by state voter registration deadlines.
Absentee Guide - State by state information on absentee voting rules.
Go Vote Absentee - Simple website to walk you through the process.
Count More - Should college students vote at home or at school? Count More will help you make the best strategic decision.
TheBallot.org - DIY guide to down-ballot races.
Election Protection - Volunteer and stop voter disenfranchisement before it happens.
Mobilize the Youth Vote - Instructions for planning and executing traditional and non-traditional youth registration and GOTV campaigns.
Overseas Vote Foundation - Information for youth and military personnel abroad.
Student Voting Rights - Know your rights, protect your rights.
Vote Back Home - Toolkits to help students register their peers from swing states. Includes data on the top 300 schools in the country for this type of work.
Vote for Change - Register to vote, find your polling place. (Official Obama campaign site)
Breaking News
TPM Election Central:
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Politico removes its claim that McCain’s tax cuts are ‘aimed directly at the middle class.’ (Updated)Earlier today, ThinkProgress criticized Politico.com for publishing a story that claimed John McCain’s proposed tax cuts for capital gains and dividends would be “aimed directly at the ...First Read:
Palin paints Obama as 'big spender'From NBC/NJ’s Matthew BergerST. CLAIRESVILLE, Ohio -- Palin focused on the economy Sunday, suggesting Obama would raise taxes, increase spending and add to the national debt.“Folks, in times like ...Political Wire:
So Much For Downplaying ExpectationsSen. John McCain vowed to "whip" Sen. Barack Obama's "you-know-what" when the two presidential candidates meet Wednesday in their final televised debate, according to the Associated Press.Said ...Political Wire:
Quote of the Day"He has to make the case that he's different than Bush and better than Obama on the economy. If he doesn't win that case, it's all over, and it's going to be a very bad year for Republicans."-- Newt ...
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YDA and CDA Project
I don't know why it didn't occurr to me as I was writing this, but Election Day Registration is really an issue that College and Young Dems should take up in conjunction with the local parties - particularly in the off years.
Ideally, any support that CDA and YDA gives to local candidates should be contingent on their support of Election Day Registration as it's such a key issue for their constituents.
We love it here in Minnesota
Same-day voter registration is one of the (many) great things about living here in Minnesota. The very first election I ever voted in was a local school board race that i didn't even realize was going on until the last few weeks of October. In 2004, I worked as an election judge out in one of Minneapolis' suburbs. Even there we had an enormous number of folks registering on election day. We had high school or college students voting for the first time along with a lot of young families that were new to the area.
Similarly, during a Special Election up in St. Cloud days after Christmas, I ran into several voters who had moved, but weren't aware they could still register. We won that race pretty handily, and it would probably be unfair to attribute it to same-day registration. However, I know it had an impact.
It's not all sweet and wonderful though.
Our previous (republican) Secretary of State hated same-day registration and was even set to testify before congress about how it contributes to voter fraud. Under that guise, we had a ton of problems on college campuses this past fall. From intimidation to outright refusing to allow students who didn't live in the dorms from voting, there was a concerted effort to keep students from the polls in spite of our same-day registration. But we managed to win a couple lawsuits that day and even had a polling place at the University of Minnesota kept open an hour longer to make up for the problems.
The moral of the story is that same-day registration is a wonderful thing, but it won't make all the other voter suppression issues go away. If anything, it makes the republicans push back even harder.
Republican Pushback
I agree. I look at it like this - even with Repub. pushback, EDR significantly boosts turnout. In a perfect world, new EDR legislation would also affirm the rights of students to vote in the communities in which they go to school.
Barring that, getting EDR up and running is a great first step, and we work from there to start pushing legislators to codify student voting rights, OR, team up with folks at the Secretary of State Project to work towards electing friendly officials who will affirm the rights of students.
It's a turf war that we'll be fighting for a long time.