How would the 2012 election be different if many more young, poor and minority citizens paricipated? We would find out if we were to modernize our elections system. In most parts of the country, our elections system is stuck in the 19th century. Often intentionally, the patchwork of laws at the state and local level makes it difficult for voters to know how, when, and where to register. These laws are needlessly complicated.
A new report by Youjin Kim, “Democracy in a Mobile America,” highlights the impact of our inflexible registration laws on eligible voters who move after their initial registration, either in-state or out. Kim finds that there are “10 to 14 thousand different ways elections are administered in this country,” making the process both confusing and undemocratic for eligible voters that move.
The result? In 2008, “4 to 5 million [eligible voters] were not registered due to administrative procedures and approximately 4 million registered voters were prevented from voting due to administrative problems.” Further, moving dampened turnout. Kim finds “less than 70% of eligible voters who lived at their current address for less than a year were registered to vote, compared to 85% of those who have lived at their current address for five years or more.”
Barriers to mobile voting disproportionately impact groups that already lack power. Young, minority, and poor eligible voters move far more often than other groups, and more often encounter the dizzying array of state registration laws. For example, younger voters were much more likely to move than older voters:
