Voting Registration: Reform Use these links to navigate the Voting: Registration section. Links for navigating the entire voting section, as well as the rest of the Law, Diversity and the Vote site are at the bottom of the page. What's Involved | Voting Fraud | Registration Discrimination | Reform | Why Reform? Motor Voter & Voting Rates | Will Reforms Increase Turnout? YOU Vote! | Some Stats | Resources/Links for This Section Reform Before 1993, voter registration laws were set by each state. By 1992, 29 states had laws allowing people to register to vote when they renewed or received a driving license, and 27 states offered mail-in registration. In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act to create the National Voter Registration Law, which established certain national voter registration standards. Many elected officials believed registering to vote was too complicated and that the rate of registration was too low. The National Voter Registration Law required most states to make registration forms available when people renewed or applied for a driving license (by Jan. 1, 1995). The national “Motor Voter” law, as it is known, also required states to allow mail-in voter registration and registration at welfare offices and agencies that served people with disabilities. Why Reform? Voter turnout in the U.S. has steadily declined since its peak of 63% in 1960. The U.S. has the lowest voter turnout in the world among established democracies. According to U.S. Census figures, in 1998, 36.4 % of registered voters voted in the U.S. Congressional elections. Some policy makers and interest groups thought that making voter registration easier would encourage people to vote. Analysts had different opinions about voter registration reforms. Registration reforms would only increase registration with people who were already inclined to vote. “Motor Voter” would make the biggest difference to citizens most affected by older laws-citizens under 30, who often move, and those in the 18-24-year-old age range, who frequently live away from home and also tend to move a lot. Generally, people wait an average of two years after moving to reregister to vote. Reforms would help eliminate financial barriers to registration. Before 1995, people had to go to county/municipal offices during the work day to register. People without transportation or flexible work schedules had few opportunities to register. After it was passed, many people criticized “Motor Voter” because it failed to require citizens to present an I.D. to vote-making voting the only government-sponsored activity that doesn’t require identification. Today, even with “Motor Voter,” states still have different voter registration processes. The National Voter Registration Law required most states to make registration forms available when people renewed or applied for a driving license (by Jan. 1, 1995). The national “Motor Voter” law, as it is known, also required states to allow mail-in voter registration and registration at welfare offices and agencies that served people with disabilities. Motor Voter & Voting Rates According to a 21-month report about the effects of Motor Voter by Human SERVE, 12 million eligible voters registered between January 1995 and November 1996. Compared to the 10 million people who registered between 1982-84 and the 11 million people who registered from 1990-92, this is the largest, recent voter registration increase for a 2-year period. It may be too early to measure the effects of the national “Motor Voter” law on voter turnout. According to studies by political scientists such as Stephen Knack, in states where similar registration programs were voluntarily adopted before the national Motor Voter law was passed (1993), the effects of these laws grew over several elections. Although many political scientists believe that we can’t yet know if registration reform will increase voter turnout over time, a study by Stephen Knack shows that it has slowed the decline in voter turnout. Will Reforms Increase Turnout? Will voter registration reform increase voter turnout? Most commentators agree that voter turnout is influenced by a number of complex factors, in addition to how easy it is to register to vote. Factors to consider include: 1. Cost Proposed initiatives to make it financially easier for people to vote include: Offering early voting and voting on more than one day, including weekends Texas offers early voting beginning on the seventeenth day before an election up until the fourth day before the official Election Day. Declare Election Day a national holiday If Election Day were a national holiday, more people would be able to go to the polls without giving up pay or vacation time. 2. Information 76 % of people surveyed recently by the League of Women Voters said that they felt that they didn’t have “enough accurate information” to vote. 3. Political Campaign Strategies Some policy analysts believe political strategists today focus voter turnout efforts on the people who are already the most likely to vote, even if they aren’t sure who they’ll vote for, instead of people whom are the least likely to vote. A 1996 League of Women Voters survey showed that person-to-person contact (a telephone call or home visit, for example) motivates people to vote. But most political campaigns today rely on impersonal, high-tech, high-cost campaign strategies and impersonal mailings. Political theorists, such as Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Anneberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, believe that election candidates often devise negative campaign strategies designed to suppress voter turnout. Jamieson studied ads used in the 1996 presidential election in 1,100 counties and found that voter turnout declined the most in counties where the ads were the most negative. Strategists know that if an election campaign becomes extremely negative, people tend not to vote. Because winning over supporters can be hard, political strategists encourage people not to vote at all. 4. The U.S. System Some people believe that voting system reforms are needed to motivate people to vote and to feel that their votes make a difference. They believe that we can learn from the experiences of other democracies. Some people favor adopting voting systems such as Ireland's "choice" voting system. In legislative elections in Ireland, voters rank candidates in order of choice. Smaller parties win a number of seats under the “choice system.” Ireland has a competitive two-party system in which the two major parties run against each other and against new parties. Voter turnout in Ireland’s last legislative election (1997) was 67 %. Some policy makers recommend increasing the size of our legislatures. The number of representatives in the U.S. House has been 435 representatives since 1910, while our population has almost tripled. 5. Jury Duty Some policy makers believe that people don’t register to vote, giving up their voting rights, because they believe that jury duty lists are drawn from voter registration lists. Jury duty can be costly for some working people. While jury duty lists in some states are based on voter registration lists, they aren’t in others. The researchers J. Eric Oliver and Raymond E. Wolfinger believe that the studies that maintain people don’t register to vote because they don’t wish to serve on a jury are flawed because they haven’t established a connection between people’s attitude about jury duty and their behavior. They believe, as a result of their own study, that either most people don’t know how jury lists are created or don’t believe that the jury duty lists they come from voter registration records. >>Youth Citizenship >>Voter Registration >>Representation >>Campaign Reform Conversation | *Voting* | Activities | Resources Online Conversations | Law, Diversity, and the Vote