Voter Eligibility and Registration
Voting, which could send a direct message to government about how citizens want to be governed, is at the heart of democracy. Among the thirty-one democracies, the U.S. has been experiencing a relatively low turnout in different levels of elections. The decrease in turnout, as discussed by many communication experts, could be in part attributed to voters’ apathy. Aside from voter attitudes, institutional barriers, such as difficulties of registering, mismatched information, registration closing day and so forth, could significantly impact voter turnout and seriously drive down turnout. In this paper, I will identify longstanding problems in the voter registration system, analyze a popular reform proposal—automatic …show more content…
The voting system that requires voters to register at least 10 to 30 days before any elections is likely to entail a separate trip to register for voters. Those people who could not register before the deadline would not be allowed to vote. Rosenstone and Wolfinger find that the effect of closing dates on turnout could be as much as 9% (32, Highton). Clearly, the registration closing dates leave less time for people to register, thereby excluding eligible voters from voting. Further, requiring voters to re-register when they change their addresses or when they move to new places has significant impact on young people who move back and forth frequently. In 2002, a Harvard political scientist found a full one-third of unregistered voters were those “who had moved and had not re-registered.” The another thing that influences turnout is mismatched information. It happens when voters changed their personal information, especially names, or misspelled them, but failed to update the registered information on time. Under this condition, voters are not allowed to vote …show more content…
The U.S is on the verge of a new paradigm for registering voters. The transformative policy innovation is already gaining ground. It is government instead of citizens that will take the responsibility for registering, which provides voters an easier and modern way to vote. Less failure to cast a ballot, higher turnout could be expected. For advancing the automatic voter registration, I will suggest that there should be more transparency and interoperability between states. In light of academic literatures列出人名, much of the difficulty of registering arises from the peculiar characteristics of American democracy. Decentralization presents a problem insofar as it brings about states difficulties to track voters when they move across states’ lines. To solve this problem, states that adopt the automatic voter registration system should automatically notify another when voters move (397, VR and ER; SSRN-id 292052). Further, at present, DMV is the major government agency that undertakes the responsibility for registering. People still face difficulties of registering if they do not have any opportunities to interact with the DMV. In order to make the automatic system more feasible, more government entities, such as food agency, local communities, and… should be involved in the new system. This could dissolve the institutional barriers more
Voting, which could send a direct message to government about how citizens want to be governed, is at the heart of democracy. Among the thirty-one democracies, the U.S. has been experiencing a relatively low turnout in different levels of elections. The decrease in turnout, as discussed by many communication experts, could be in part attributed to voters’ apathy. Aside from voter attitudes, institutional barriers, such as difficulties of registering, mismatched information, registration closing day and so forth, could significantly impact voter turnout and seriously drive down turnout. In this paper, I will identify longstanding problems in the voter registration system, analyze a popular reform proposal—automatic …show more content…
The voting system that requires voters to register at least 10 to 30 days before any elections is likely to entail a separate trip to register for voters. Those people who could not register before the deadline would not be allowed to vote. Rosenstone and Wolfinger find that the effect of closing dates on turnout could be as much as 9% (32, Highton). Clearly, the registration closing dates leave less time for people to register, thereby excluding eligible voters from voting. Further, requiring voters to re-register when they change their addresses or when they move to new places has significant impact on young people who move back and forth frequently. In 2002, a Harvard political scientist found a full one-third of unregistered voters were those “who had moved and had not re-registered.” The another thing that influences turnout is mismatched information. It happens when voters changed their personal information, especially names, or misspelled them, but failed to update the registered information on time. Under this condition, voters are not allowed to vote …show more content…
The U.S is on the verge of a new paradigm for registering voters. The transformative policy innovation is already gaining ground. It is government instead of citizens that will take the responsibility for registering, which provides voters an easier and modern way to vote. Less failure to cast a ballot, higher turnout could be expected. For advancing the automatic voter registration, I will suggest that there should be more transparency and interoperability between states. In light of academic literatures列出人名, much of the difficulty of registering arises from the peculiar characteristics of American democracy. Decentralization presents a problem insofar as it brings about states difficulties to track voters when they move across states’ lines. To solve this problem, states that adopt the automatic voter registration system should automatically notify another when voters move (397, VR and ER; SSRN-id 292052). Further, at present, DMV is the major government agency that undertakes the responsibility for registering. People still face difficulties of registering if they do not have any opportunities to interact with the DMV. In order to make the automatic system more feasible, more government entities, such as food agency, local communities, and… should be involved in the new system. This could dissolve the institutional barriers more