The Center for Civic Participation
Tools For Florida Democracy
Election Day Registration (EDR), sometimes called “Same Day Registration” (SDR), allows eligible voters to register and cast a ballot on Election Day. Nine states currently have Same Day Registration. Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin adopted EDR in the 1970s; Idaho, New Hampshire and Wyoming enacted Election Day Registration two decades later. More recently, Montana implemented EDR in 2006, while Iowa and North Carolina enacted Same Day Registration in 2007. Iowa allows registration and voting on Election Day. North Carolina permits registration and voting during the state’s extended early voting period. By counteracting arbitrary voter registration deadlines, EDR greatly enhances the opportunity for Americans to participate in the electoral process and cast a ballot that will be properly counted. States with EDR have historically boasted turnout rates 10 to 12 percentage points higher than states that do not off er Election Day Registration. EDR allows eligible voters who may have been mistakenly purged from the voting rolls to cast a meaningful ballot. Th e Help America Vote Act of 2002 required states to off er provisional ballots at the polls to voters whose names did not appear on the voter rolls. Th ese provisional ballots will only be counted if election offi cials subsequently determine that the individuals were eligible to vote.12 More than one in three of the almost 2 million provisional ballots cast in 2004 were ultimately discounted.13 Over 20 percent of provisional ballots cast in the 2006 midterm election were rejected.14 Much like patients sent home with a placebo, many provisional voters mistakenly believed that they were given a genuine opportunity to vote. EDR allows voters who have been purged or mistakenly left off the rolls to re-register and cast a ballot that will be counted. EDR states consistently boast higher turnout than non-EDR states. States with Election Day Registration have boasted higher voter turnout than those without EDR for over 25 years. Preliminary data show an average voter turnout seven percentage points higher than the average turnout for non-EDR states in November 2008. Th e EDR turnout advantage reached 12 percentage points in the 2004 presidential race. While higher voting rates in Election Day Registration states may not be solely attributable to EDR, research shows that at least three to six percentage points of historical increases were directly related to EDR. EDR counteracts arbitrary voter registration deadlines. Voter registration deadlines vary widely across the nation. Th e experience of EDR states show that these cut-off dates bear little relevance to a state’s ability to run smooth elections. Nevertheless, 28 states close off voter registration 25 or more days before the election—well before many would-be voters have been fully apprised of candidates and campaign issues. Voter registration deadlines close before the media and the public fully focus on elections. For example, the University of Wisconsin’s NewsLab found that over 40 percent of election news stories were aired in the fi nal week before the 2006 election in seven Midwest media markets.15 A 2000 election poll found that the percentage of people giving “quite a lot” of thought to the election rose signifi cantly as Election Day approached, from 59 percent in September to 75 percent in the fi rst week of November.16 An unregistered voter who had decided to participate in the historic 2008 presidential and congressional elections in the fi nal week of the campaigns would have been ineligible to vote in 41 states. EDR assists young voters. Young Americans move frequently—for school, for jobs, for family—making it harder for them to keep their voter registrations current. Although voter turnout among 18-29 year olds has steadily increased over the last four presidential elections, it still lagged behind the overall turnout rate.17 EDR is a powerful tool that can be used to ensure that young people are able to register and vote. Research indicates that allowing young people to register to vote on Election Day could increase youth turnout in presidential elections by as much as 14 percentage points.18 Montanans between the ages of 18 and 25 comprised more than a third of the approximately 9200 individuals who registered to vote under Montana’s new statute between October 7, 2006 and November 7, 2006.19 EDR enfranchises geographically mobile and lower-income citizens. Census data show that over 35 million people in America moved between 2007 and 2008. Approximately 45 percent of those moving during this period had incomes of less than $25,000.20 With voter registration deadlines, many Americans who have recently moved are unable to fulfi ll their duty as citizens to vote in elections. With EDR, they can re-register on Election Day and cast a ballot. Research dating to the 1940s has consistently shown that young citizens vote at lower rates than older citizens and are less likely to feel connected to the electoral process (Highton and Wolfinger 2001). Low voter turnout among young citizens has grown more acute since 1972, when the nationwide voting age was lowered to 18. According to figures compiled by CIRCLE researchers, the proportion of eligible citizens age 18-24 who went to the polls declined from 55% in 1972 to 42% in 2000 (CIRCLE 2003). This low and diminishing level of involvement reflects something of a vicious cycle. Because young people vote at low rates, they are less likely to be courted by campaigns (Bennett 1991). As campaigns attend to other constituencies, young voters are neither central to the framing of campaign issues nor the object of voter mobilization efforts. As the proportion of the voting electorate below the age of 26 declines, young people are at risk of becoming increasingly irrelevant to campaigns and elections. Concerned about the implications of low voter turnout among youth, the Youth Vote coalition was formed with the aim of increasing the presence of young people in all facets of politics, including elections. In 2000 and 2001, a variety of field experiments were undertaken to examine whether and how young voters could be mobilized. The experiments conducted in 2000 demonstrated that local phone banks staffed by Youth Vote volunteers could successfully mobilize young voters living on or nearby college campuses (Green and Gerber 2001). Sites in Albany, Stony Brook, Boulder, and Eugene varied in the effectiveness of their phone banking efforts, but on average they succeeded in raising turnout by 5 percentage-points, a statistically significant finding. The 2000 campaign also featured door-to-door canvassing, which increased turnout markedly and to a statistically significant degree. Because the door-to-door canvassing experiments were somewhat smaller in size than the phone banking studies, they were the focus of the 2001 Youth Vote campaign, which attempted to raise turnout in municipal elections held in Bridgeport, Columbus, Detroit, Minneapolis, Raleigh, and St. Paul. The results confirmed earlier findings suggesting the importance of personal interaction with young voters: over all of the sites, turnout increased 7.1 percentage-points as the result of canvassing. By contrast, impersonal approaches, such as a pre-recorded phone calls reminding people to vote, had no effect whatsoever (Green, Gerber, and Nickerson 2002). Given these organizational challenges, Youth Vote was fortunate to find ways of generating strong results from commercial phone banks. It is far easier to generate a nationwide phone banking campaign using commercial telemarketing firms than it is to develop a decentralized network of local phone banks using paid volunteers. While the four-week commercial phone banking effort was quite expensive when viewed on a cost-per-vote basis, the final week considered on its own was reasonably cost effective. Using an estimate of 20-25 contacts per vote, the commercial phone bank’s fee of $1.50 per contact translates in to $30.00 to $37.50 per vote. The local commercial phone bank’s cost per contact was $1 apiece, which at 20 contacts per vote comes to $20 per vote. This figure may be a bit optimistic, since the local commercial phone bank was tested in just one site, and the 20 contacts-per-vote estimate is estimated with a margin of statistical uncertainty. Nevertheless, even taking the higher estimate of $37.50, we would conclude that 50,000 additional young voters could be encourage to vote with an expenditure of less than $2 million.
