How hard can it be: do citizens think it is difficult to register to vote?

• Author: Alvarez, R. Michael

INTRODUCTION

A basic tenet of normative democratic theory is political equality. The wants and desires of all citizens in a democratic society should be considered equally in the development of public policy; no citizen's preferences or needs should have greater weight than the preferences or needs of another citizen. (1) When it comes to the act of voting, Robert Dahl noted two precepts: that all qualified individuals express their preferences and that these preferences all have equal weight when it comes to their tabulation. (2) However, here in the United States the requirement of voter registration presents a clear obstacle to the realization of Dahl's precepts. Historically, registration was used as a tool to disenfranchise minority voters. Today, registration is commonly justified as a means to prevent electoral fraud; however, events surrounding the 2004 election raise questions of whether we have truly escaped the more nefarious motive for voter registration.

According to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, the situation in the United States may be far from this normative notion of all people's desires being considered equally: in the 2004 presidential election, the Census Bureau estimated that there were nearly 55 million eligible American citizens who were not registered to vote, or close to 28% of the eligible electorate. (3) Registration--unless the eligible citizen resides in North Dakota, the only state in the Union that does not require voter registration--is an essential precondition for participation in the American electoral process. Thus, as the procedures of American democracy require voters engage in a two-step process in order to cast their ballot in forty-nine of the fifty states, the first step being requiring eligible citizens register to vote, there is concern that these procedures themselves (and not just a lack of interest in the electoral process) may be an important factor blocking or making more difficult the expression of preference by these 55 million American adult citizens. Even with the implementation of "Motor Voter," which allows for voter registration at the DMV, access to voter registration information and forms remains unequal since "Motor Voter" disproportionately benefits owners of automobiles and thus may overlook a particularly vulnerable segment of the unregistered population.

Indeed, conventional wisdom--and academic research--suggest that the voter registration process in the United States can be a barrier that keeps some citizens from participating in elections. Piven and Cloward state, "People vote if they are registered. Nonvoting is almost entirely classified among those who are not registered. This is prima facie evidence of the deterrent impact of registration procedures on voting." (4) The bias inherent in the process of voter registration, as illustrated in the census data noted above, has been identified as a fundamental problem in the United States because the electoral system does not "express equal respect for all voters." (5) This principle is worthwhile to consider in detail because the theoretical construct of "equal respect" has an expressive component that may influence the perception of some individuals in the society. As one theorist noted:

[T]he burdens that [voter registration laws] create fall disproportionately on citizens who are poorer, less educated, and in other respects less well-off--the same people who are already less likely to vote. If the rules of the electoral system themselves are partly responsible for these unequal patterns of voting, then the system cannot be said to express equal respect for all voters. The disrespect is not explicit, as it is when the system formally excludes some citizens. But implicit messages are no less a significant part of institutional meanings.... The unequal voting is the product of rules that could be changed ... [and which] send the message that their fellow citizens are indifferent to the persistence of this inequality, and do not care enough to try to remove the barriers that sustain it.... [T]he institution expresses disrespect toward disadvantaged citizens even when they manage to overcome the barriers and cast a vote. (6) This argument is very straightforward: societal knowledge of the impact of barriers communicates to all citizens that the exclusion of some individuals is in some way appropriate. It also suggests that individuals within these implicitly excluded groups are likely to view voter registration differently than do those who are "privileged" by the institutional rules. The survey data presented in this paper is an attempt to discern whether there are differences in attitudes about the ease of the voter registration process between the disadvantaged populations and those who are more socioeconomically advantaged.

Despite a possible change in the strength of this relationship brought on by the implementations of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and National Voting Rights Act (NVRA), (7) in the not-so-distant past, stringent registration requirements disenfranchised certain segments of the American population, or made it extremely difficult and costly for them to register and vote. (8) More recently, despite the elimination of many explicit barriers to participation, research has concluded that policy and procedural problems like lengthy pre-election deadlines for registration, inconvenient locations for registration, or confusing and complex forms and requirements, have made the registration process difficult for some eligible citizens. (9) In the face of popular opinion, some recent research questions whether continued easing of registration procedures will necessarily lead to substantial gains in voter turnout. (10)

In the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, the apparent failure of voting technology was the primary focus of media and public attention. However, careful analysis showed that voter registration problems were also the cause of many failures in the electoral process in many states. A litany of problems have been identified, including lost or incorrect registration records, registration lists that include people who have moved or passed away, lists including dogs, and lists that have been manipulated so that eligible votes have been incorrectly removed. (11) Such problems led to an estimate from the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project that of the four to six million votes lost in the 2000 presidential election, at least half (1.5 to 3 million) were lost due to voter registration problems. (12) Problems surrounding voter registration appeared again in the 2004 Presidential election; the best known example being allegations of Democratic registration forms being shredded in Nevada and Oregon. (13)

In recent decades, voter registration has been the focus of many state and federal reform efforts, some predating the 2000 presidential election. The most prominent of these efforts before the 2000 presidential election was the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which pushed states to implement a number of procedural changes to make the process of voter registration easier. (14) After 2000, the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) sought to push states in different directions, building on the NVRA reforms. (15) The two most significant changes to voter registration in HAVA were (1) the requirement that states implement, by 2006, a statewide voter registry (16), and (2) that all states allow for provisional (or "fail-safe") voting on election day (17). Many states have implemented other changes to their voter registration procedures as well.

Both the NVRA and HAVA reforms were intended to make the registration process easier for voters to navigate and to make it easier for them to remain registered to vote. Concerns do persist, however, that some states have not adequately implemented NVRA and that states have not been working rapidly enough to implement HAVA's voter registration requirements. (18) Even with full implementation of the NVRA and HAVA reforms there is evidence in the research literature that registration reforms may have limited impact on increasing voter participation. (19) While acknowledging the NVRA reforms may increase voter registration among members of the lower socioeconomic strata, this research predicts that turnout among this group will continue to lag behind that of the upper classes. (20) The legislative history for the NVRA specifically focuses on increasing turnout among ethnic minorities and individuals with disabilities. (21)

Thus, whether registration is the sole--or primary--barrier to voting is a subject of debate in the research literature. This Article does not examine the evidence regarding whether further procedural reforms will increase turnout. Rather, we examine public perceptions of registration requirements. We find that a small but significant number of Americans perceive that the registration process is difficult; however, for a supermajority of the U.S. population, registering to vote is not perceived as a difficult process. This suggests that even if further procedural reforms can lead to increased voter participation, substantial public education may be required to obtain significant public support for reform efforts.

Our analysis starts with a review of the legal issues that have surrounded voter registration historically and how voter registration has been used as a tool for disenfranchising specific populations of voters. We then consider the reforms contained in the NVRA and the HAVA designed to improve and to simplify the voter registration process. With this legal framework in place, we turn to the results of a national random sample survey of voters and non-voters that considers whether individuals perceive the existing voter registration framework to be easy or difficult to navigate. Given recent findings that young and minority voters are less likely to participate, (22) we provide extensive...