Voter Registration Accuracy and Security

Major features of voter registration that have been subject to research have included: 

• Measuring who is registered to vote, although we note the significant difficulty in doing so. It is hard to assess who is not registered to vote using voter registration data, and generating accurate survey responses is also challenging.
• The legal framework for voter registration, including the constitutional allocation of election authority and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). 
• Agency-based registration, including “motor-voter” registration and automatic voter registration (AVR). 

This research has established important practices that increase the quality of the voter experience and/or confidence in elections: 

• Modern scholarship generally shows relatively modest participatory benefits of policies designed to make registration more accessible, like extending voter registration deadlines, Election Day and same-day registration, preregistration for teenagers, etc.
• Because of the NVRA, transactions at state motor vehicle agencies are the most common way that people initiate and update voter registrations in the United States.
• Research suggests that registration transfers sometimes improve voter access in their new jurisdictions and the accuracy of voter registration lists in their prior ones. 
• Integrating information from motor vehicle transactions into voter registration records can improve their accuracy, even if a state doesn’t adopt AVR.

The following are gaps that would benefit from short- and long-term academic-election official research collaborations: 

• Much of the research on voter registration is now outdated.  Updated research on voter registration list maintenance, including more descriptive research on inaccuracy, exploration of new data sources to identify registrants who have likely moved, how much time without voter activity is needed to establish that a registrant has likely moved, and how to increase response rates to confirmation notices. 
• Evaluate promising state reforms that shift part of the registration burden from citizens to the government. More research is needed documenting the ways in which these types of policies affect the accuracy of voter registration lists and the costs of voter registration. 
• The financial costs of building and maintaining voter registration infrastructure, including the costs of developing and maintaining voter registration databases. 
• Data confidentiality, data decentralization, and financial costs may present barriers to further research. Partnerships between researchers, election officials, and other stakeholders will be key to overcoming these barriers.