“Forty-four percent of eligible unregistered individuals say they do not want to vote. Another 27 percent say they intend to register but haven’t done so yet, and 25 percent say they are unregistered because they have not been inspired by a candidate or issue. Eleven percent do not want to register due to privacy or security reasons.”
– Pew Charitable Trusts nationally representative survey conducted in March and April 2016
I recently joined a group of citizen activists that canvassed the Wayne Hills area of Portsmouth to register people to vote in what many scholars feel is the most important election of their lives. We had the papers for voter registration and encouraged people door-to-door to complete the needed form in a process that required perhaps 3-5 minutes.
Many of the people we met claimed they were not registered. However, the most amazing thing to me was that the overwhelming number of the unregistered individuals we met – although eligible – did not even want to register. In fact, I was not able to register a single person. They firmly denied the opportunity and many expressed no interest in the election of 2020. Some seemed offended we would even ask them to participate.
A 2012 Pew Research Center study reported that 51 million citizens – nearly one-in-four eligible to vote – had not registered.
Pew Research in 2017 confirms the unregistered are more likely to indicate a broad distaste for the electoral system than registered individuals, who tend to give election-specific motives for nonvoting, such as disliking the candidates or not knowing enough about the issues.
Forty percent of the unregistered say their aversion to politics is a major reason they don’t want to vote, and 35 percent say voting has little to do with the way real decisions are made, compared with 20 and 19 percent of registered but infrequent voters, respectively.
(“Why Are Millions of Citizens Not Registered to Vote?. Pew. Issue Brief. June 21, 2017.)
Previous research has found that many unregistered students feel they should not vote because they are insecure about their political knowledge. However, this survey found that only 17 percent of the unregistered population chose not to vote because they are too uninformed about the candidates or issues to make good decisions, compared with more than twice that amount – 39 percent – of registered infrequent voters.
Before the 2016 presidential election, the Pew Charitable Trusts found …
Less than 20 percent of eligible citizens have been offered the chance to register at a motor vehicle or other government agency.
The unregistered were more likely to say they do not vote because they dislike politics or believe voting will not make a difference, while people who are registered but vote infrequently say they do not vote more often because they are not informed enough about the candidates or issues.
At least 13 percent of the unregistered, generally those who are younger and more civically engaged, say they could be motivated to register in the future.
The 2020 Registration
In recent months, several states have experienced a remarkable decline in their new voter registration numbers. This trend is especially notable when compared with new voter registration numbers from the months leading up to the last presidential election in 2016. The Center for Election Innovation and Research compiled this official new voter registration for the spring of 2020 and compared them with figures from 2016.
It is likely that much of the decline in new voter registrations can be attributed to distancing and closures related to the COVΖD-19 pandemic. Department of Motor Vehicle closures, limited in-person interactions, and a halt to large public gatherings have curbed traditional sources of registration such as “motor-voter” and “get-out-the-vote” registration drives.
(“New Voter Registrations in 2020.” The Center for Election Innovation and Research. June 10, 2020.)
The apathy is appalling. Some of the resistance is because if you live in a state where voter rolls are used to summon veniremen, you can be called for jury duty. Others say they do not want their registration (Democrat, Republican, Independent) to be a matter of public record.
And, yet another reason for failing to register as a Democrat or as a Republican, is detest for campaign mail and even phone calls in the weeks before the election. A related recent argument against registration is that when you register to vote, you’re providing personal information to go into someone’s database and on someone’s list. You may think that information is secure, but it isn’t. That information is provided by election officials to political parties and others.
Andrew Joseph Pegoda – lecturer in women's, gender and sexuality studies; religious studies; and English at the University of Houston – says people tell him …
They were intimidated by friends, by family members or by people at polling places.
When facing the complexities of races with dozens of candidates and complicated issues, they don't feel they know enough to make informed decisions.
* They worry about feeling personally responsible if they vote for a candidate or position and there are unforeseen consequences, such as cuts to important aid programs.
Members of any group, but especially those of underrepresented groups, long to vote for desirable candidates but not feel that current candidates offer the possibility that anything will really change.
They have not voted because they do not trust a nation that they feel has lied and perpetuated systemic abuse against minorities, aggravated further by widespread gerrymandering and for presidential elections, by an Electoral College system that doesn’t weigh each vote the same.
They cannot vote because they lack transportation. They are homeless. They lack child care. They are disabled. They work, go to school and live in different cities.(This is even more applicable for the 7 to 8 million in the U.S. who hold multiple jobs. Laws guarantee time off for voting but aren’t enforceable and aren’t always workable.)
(Andrew Joseph Pegoda. “I asked people why they don’t vote, and this is what they told me.” The Conversation. January 17, 2020.)
The Future
So, studies show at least 51 million people are unregistered. Research also reports that more than 40 percent of the unregistered cared who would win the presidency in 2016. Yet, still these people refused to register and refused to vote. 2020? Signs are growing that voter turnout in 2020 could reach the highest levels in decades – if not the highest in the past century
Projections are very encouraging. The 2020 election is likely to be defined by a historic surge of new voters. In the 2018 midterm, nearly 120 million people voted, about 35 million more than in the previous midterm, in 2014, with 51 percent of eligible voters participating—a huge increase over the previous three midterms. The 2018 level represented the largest share of eligible voters to turn out in a midterm year since 1914.
But, what about my evening in Wayne Hills? We all know our civics – when people exercise their power as voters, they can elect local, state, and national leaders who are responsive to and reflective of the communities they serve. Our collective self-rule is established and fostered through free, fair, accessible, and secure elections through which the voice of every eligible American is heard.
What will change the dynamics and make more people register and vote? Perhaps a simple solution would cause considerable change. The Center for American Progress research finds that, if every state implemented Oregon’s model of Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), more than 22 million registered voters could be added to state voter rolls in just the first year.
The Oregon Model establishes that an eligible voter who interacts with the DMV is not asked whether they would like to register to vote, but instead is automatically opted into registering. It eliminates the need to fill out the voter registration card for those with qualifying interactions at the DMV. The voter is later sent a notification informing them that they were registered and that they can opt-out by returning the notification.
Based on this analysis, one could expect more than 7.9 million new voters nationwide—including 3.2 million previously disengaged voters—within just the first year of implementation.
Oregon's success?
The initiative helped move Oregon from the bottom of state rankings for the number of people of color registered to vote to the second highest in the country. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said, “The new voters under the automatic voter registration system … are less urban, they are less wealthy, and they are much more diverse than our typical voters that either register online or through the paper process. ”
Brown also credited the initiative for increasing voter turnout in last year’s midterms from 43 percent to 60 percent, which she said could be backed up by data differentiating new automatically registered voters from the increased enthusiasm of Democrats last year.
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