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Political Behavior

Erschienen in:

01.12.2008 | Original Paper

Portable Voter Registration

verfasst von: Michael P. McDonald

Erschienen in: Political Behavior | Ausgabe 4/2008

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Abstract

I find that statewide registration portability—permitting registrants who move anywhere within a state to transfer their registration and vote on Election Day at their new polling place—increases turnout rates among movers by 2.4% points. The effect is similar among movers living in EDR states, suggesting that about a quarter of the beneficial turnout effect of EDR is realized by recent movers. Yet, movers are still less likely to vote even where these policies are present. These findings further challenge existing literature that finds that reregistering is the primary impediment of voting among movers.

Vorheriger Artikel How Initiatives Don’t Always Make Citizens: Ballot Initiatives in the American States, 1978–2004

Nächster Artikel The Gender Gap in Ideology

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Dan Gearino. “Senate passes election-day voter registration.” Globe Gazette. March 27, 2007. In 2007, North Carolina passed Election Day Registration for early voters, see: Mark Binker. “Legislature: House tentatively backs voter registration change.” Raleigh News Record, March 28, 2007. For other legislative action, see Greene (2007a).

For example, scholars find significant turnout effects among states using varying mail-in registration (Knack 1995; Rhine 1996) and more intricate procedural variation in extended registration hours and procedures for purging deadwood from registration lists (Rosenstone and Wolfinger 1978; Mitchell and Wlezien 1995).

This is perhaps the greatest number of persons affected by post-registration deadline procedures. There are other categories, too. Depending on state law, persons who change names, are discharged from the military, or have become new citizens may be permitted to register and vote after a deadline. Under federal provisions in the Voting Rights Act (42 USC § 1973aa-1(e)), registered voters who establish new residency outside a state 30 days prior to the election are permitted to vote for presidential electors in their state of previous domicile.

42 U.S.C. 20 § 1973gg-6(c).

Rhode Island is instructive of the fine print that makes it difficult to classify election administration procedures. Election Day registration is permitted for persons casting a vote for president only (R.I. Gen. Laws § 17-1-3), and the state enables statewide portable registration for moves 30 days or more before an election, for moves of less than 30 days, registrants must vote at their former precinct (R.I. Gen. Laws § 17-9.1-16(a)(2)). I define Rhode Island as an EDR state because a presidential election is analyzed here.

The specification of ‘non-voter’ is consistent with the Census Bureau (2005) definitions (see also, Leighley and Nagler 1992).

Alternative operationalization of recent movers was tested in the statistical analysis of voting propensities that follows. These specifications reveal that shorter time-horizons, e.g., 6–11 months, shifted the positive estimated effect of an interaction term identifying movers in states with statewide portable registration into the coefficient for a dichotomous variable indicating if a state has statewide portable registration, raising this coefficient to statistical significance in some tested models. This dynamic suggests that defining movers as someone who moved since the last presidential election correctly includes those peripheral voters among recent movers advantaged by statewide portable registration.

The CPS is a large survey, so the 95% confidence interval for the cell proportions reported here tend to be plus or minus one half of a percentage point or less. Thirty two percent of citizen-voting-age recent movers (persons living 4 years or less at their current address) reported being age 18–29 compared to 12% among others. Movers tend to be persons of color: 64% of movers identified themselves as non-Hispanic White compared to 77% among others. They tend to by much less likely to own a home: 54% of movers compared to 89% of others. Movers only tend to be a little poorer: e.g., 32% reported family income less than $15,000 compared to 29% among others. And movers are slightly more educated: e.g., 54% of movers report at least a high school education compared to 52% among others.

For all 2004 North Carolina voters, 14% were age 18–29 compared to 26% for those who registered and voted on Election Day. Whites were 79% of all voters, compared to 64% among Election Day registrant voters. Among all voters, 47% registered as a Democrat, 37% Republican, and 16% undeclared or minor party; among Election Day registrant voters, 44% registered as Democrat, 35% Republican, and 20% undeclared or minor party.

Bureau of the Census [producer, distributor]. (2005). Current population survey, November 2004: Voting and registration supplement [machine-readable data file]. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census.

Gimpel, J., Dyck, J. J., & Shaw, D. R. (2007). Election year stimuli and the timing of voter registration. Party Politics, 13(3), 351–374.CrossRef

Greene, S. (2007a). Election Day registration: A case study. Electionline Briefing, February, 2007.

Greene, S. (2007b). Midwest voter registration data-sharing project moves forward. Electionline Weekly, December 13, 2007.

Highton, B. (1997). Easy registration and voter turnout. The Journal of Politics, 59(2), 565–575.CrossRef

Highton, B. (2000). Residential mobility, community mobility, and electoral participation. Political Behavior, 22(2), 109–120.CrossRef

Keyssar, A. (2000). The right to vote: The contested history of democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books.

Knack, S. (1995). Does ‘Motor Voter’ work? Evidence from state-level data. The Journal of Politics, 57(3), 796–811.CrossRef

Levitt, J., Weiser, W., & Munoz, A. (2006). Making the list: Database matching and verification processes for voter registration. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, Voting Rights and Elections Series, March 24, 2006.

Leighley, J. E., & Nagler, J. (1992). Socioeconomic class bias in turnout, 1964–1988: The voters remain the same. The American Political Science Review, 86(3), 725–736.CrossRef

McDonald, M. P., & Levitt, J. (2008). Seeing double voting: An extension of the birthday problem. Election Law Journal, 7(1), (forthcoming).

Mitchell, G. E., & Wlezien, C. (1995). The impact of legal constraints on voter registration, turnout, and the composition of the American electorate. Political Behavior, 17(2), 179–202.CrossRef

Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

Rhine, S. L. (1996). An analysis of the impact of registration factors on turnout in 1992. Political Behavior 18(2), 171–185.CrossRef

Rosenstone, S., & Hansen, J. M. (1993). Mobilization, participation, and democracy in America. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company.

Rosenstone, S., & Wolfinger R. E. (1978). The effect of registration laws on voter turnout. The American Political Science Review, 72(1), 22–45.

Sigelman, L., & Jewell, M. E. (1986). From core to periphery: A note on the imagery of concentric electorates. The Journal of Politics, 48(2), 440–449.CrossRef

Squire, P., Wolfinger, R. E., & Glass, D. P. (1987). Residential mobility and voter turnout. The American Political Science Review, 81(1), 45–66.CrossRef

Teixeira, R. A. (1992). The disappearing American voter. Washington, DC: Brookings Press.

Timpone, R. J. (1998). Structure, behavior, and voter turnout in the United States. The American Political Science Review, 92(1), 145–158.CrossRef

U. S. Election Assistance Commission. (2006). Election crimes: An initial review and recommendations for future study. Washington, DC: United States Election Assistance Commission.

Wolfinger, R. E., & Rosenstone, S. (1980). Who votes? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Titel: Portable Voter Registration
verfasst von: Michael P. McDonald
Publikationsdatum: 01.12.2008
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Political Behavior / Ausgabe 4/2008
Print ISSN: 0190-9320
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-6687
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-008-9055-z

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