Although voter registration has been the subject of recent controversy, our democracy did not always require people to register to vote. Today, all states except North Dakota have some form of voter registration, and some are considering reforms that would make registering to vote easier and more accessible.
Though most laws and regulations concerning elections are handled by the states, a few federal laws guide voter registration nationwide. The most important of these are the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), and the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The VRA prohibits racial discrimination in voter registration; the NVRA requires that states make voter registration widely available and limits what they can do to remove voters from the rolls. One goal of HAVA was to make the voting process more consistent across states, and it requires all new registrants to provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number with their registration application. In recent years, states have implemented new ways to register, including online voter registration and automatic voter registration.
This explainer was last updated on May 13, 2026.
Background
Pre-registration hasn’t always been a requirement to vote. During the first American elections, it was assumed that local officials personally knew the small number of residents in their towns who met the property qualifications to vote. Massachusetts instituted the first registration requirement in 1800. The earliest registration processes were mostly used to enforce the requirement that qualified voters must pay their taxes. Anti-immigration agitation in the 1830s saw another wave of state voter registration laws that were aimed at keeping non-citizens from the polls. (Before this movement, several states had granted non-citizens the right to vote.) Still, throughout most of the 19th century, pre-registration was not a requirement to vote in all states.
Voter registration that resembles modern practices began in the late 1800s when states expanded their registration requirements, paying particular attention to controlling the voting of city dwellers, immigrants, and African Americans. During the “Progressive Era” (1890–1920), many states adopted voter registration laws that applied only to cities. Among the reasons for this specificity was the desire of rural-dominated state legislatures to blunt the political power of rapidly growing urban areas, which were growing largely through the influx of new immigrants. In addition, stories of political corruption and vote fraud, such as “repeat voting,” tended to arise most often in urban settings.
Despite the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870, which stated that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged... on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” the Union and its states continued to pass many laws that denied Black Americans their newly won constitutional rights. As chronicled by C. Vann Woodward’s classic book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow,
the official disenfranchisement of Black Americans heightened in the South just as Black politicians began to gain power. In addition to imposing extraordinary voting requirements such as literacy tests that disadvantaged Black citizens, Southern voter registration, in general, was becoming increasingly burdened by registration regulations.
State voter registration laws that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century applied to voters of all races and deterred the participation of all but the most persistent citizens. For instance, many states required voters to register annually, and/or removed voters from the rolls if they failed to vote in an election. Registration closing dates—the date by which voter registration rolls would be closed before an upcoming election—were often months ahead of elections. Even as late as 1972, five states cut off registration more than a month before an election.
The civil rights movement that succeeded in the passage of the Voting Rights Act also inspired related movements that called for lowering voter registration barriers for reasons other than race. The President's Commission on Registration and Voting Participation, appointed by President Kennedy in early 1963, recommended a series of reforms to ease voter registration, most of which were eventually adopted. Among these were reducing the gap between registration closing dates and elections, reducing residency requirements, and increasing opportunities to vote absentee. Additionally, the 26th Amendment was enacted in 1971, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
NVRA
The National Voter Registration Act (also known simply as the “NVRA” or the “Motor Voter Act”) of 1993 represented the culmination of a quarter-century of efforts to relax the strict voter registration requirements that had grown over the previous century. Before its enactment, efforts had been made to pass federal laws instituting a national “postcard” registration form, as well as to encourage states to adopt “motor voter” laws—that is, laws allowing citizens to register when they got their driver’s licenses.
The first attempt to enact a “motor voter” law failed in 1992 when Congress passed the bill, but President George H.W. Bush vetoed it. One year later, Congress passed the NVRA, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993. The NVRA contained the following major provisions:
- States were required to allow voter registration by mail.
- States were required to offer voters the opportunity to register to vote simultaneously when applying for a driver’s license and were also required to offer registration at public assistance agencies.
- States were not allowed to remove voters from the rolls solely for non-voting. Voters were allowed to be removed only if they requested it or if they died, moved out of jurisdiction, or were removed because of a felony conviction or mental incapacity.
Although the NVRA prohibited the removal of voters from the rolls simply for non-voting, it did allow states to use non-voting as a trigger to inquire whether a non-voter had moved from the jurisdiction without notifying local election officials. In particular, a state can remove someone from the rolls if it sends a notice to a non-voter and the non-voter fails to respond (or vote) within the next two federal elections. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the issue of how aggressively states could initiate removal proceedings when registered voters failed to vote. In Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, the Court ruled that Ohio’s practice of sending a mailed notice to non-voters after their first missed election to start the removal process was allowed under the NVRA.
When the NVRA passed, it exempted states that either did not have a voter registration requirement or allowed registration on Election Day at the polls. Later, the exemption was extended to two states that passed Election Day registration soon after the NVRA was passed.
As a result, Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are the only six states exempt from the NVRA.
How many are registered?
The Election Assistance Commission’s 2024 report on the implementation of the NVRA stated that there are over 234 million registered voters in the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. With an estimated voting-eligible population of 243.8 million, this suggests that about 96% of eligible voters are registered and on the voting rolls.
However, these registration statistics are undoubtedly an overestimate due to the persistence of “deadwood” on the rolls. Precisely how much deadwood persists on voter rolls is unknown and subject to intense research and public debate. In his paper “Too Large, Too Small, or Just Right?”, Charles Stewart finds that much of the deadwood on the rolls results from a failure to remove voters once they move rather than accidentally retaining dead voters on the rolls.
One way to estimate the amount of deadwood is to examine the number of inactive voters in states that distinguish between active and inactive voters. (In general, states that use the “inactive” voter category will move a registered voter to inactive status when they have reason to believe the voter has moved or died but have yet to receive definitive confirmation.) In 2024, among the states that use the inactive status, 9.9% of registrants were inactive, ranging from 5.8% in Nebraska to 25.9% in Arkansas. Taking the inactive percentage as an estimate of the amount of deadwood on the voter rolls, this would suggest that the actual voter registration rate nationwide is closer to 87% of the eligible electorate.
An alternative approach to estimating the number of people registered in each state is to use responses to survey questions that ask respondents about their registration status. This approach is justified in part by analysis performed by Barry C. Burden in the book The Measure of American Elections. Burden notes that survey-based measures of registration rates are correlated with the rates reported by states using official rates, but that they are generally less extreme than the state-reported rates.
The following two maps illustrate reported voter registration rates in 2024 using two methods. The first map shows registration rates based on the officially reported number of registered voters in each state. The second map relies on responses to the 2024 Voting and Registration Supplement of the Current Population Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census.
Click to view full-size images.
Click to view full-size images.
Click to view full-size images.
One takeaway from the first map is that there is one state with more registered voters than the estimated citizen voting-age population: Alaska. This is evidence of significant deadwood on Alaska’s voter rolls, but there could still be a notable amount of deadwood in states with official registration rates less than 100%.
By design, no state in the second map has registration rates exceeding 100%. According to these data, Oregon had the highest registration rate (as a function of voting age population) at 93.4%, and Maryland was a close second with 93.1%. The state with the lowest registration rate is Hawaii, coming in at 75.3%.
The presence of more voters on the rolls than the citizen voting age population (CVAP) has been used as evidence that voting lists are ripe for fraud. This is unlikely since the “excess” in registrations is primarily due to people remaining on the rolls despite no longer being residents of the state or having died. Though some may be concerned that members of this population (CVAP) who recently moved across state lines could attempt to vote in both their old state and new state, there are many strong deterrents to this form of double voting. Many states classify double voting as a felony, and punishments include fines or jail time. Additionally, states are increasingly cross-checking their voter registration lists with one another to identify and remove cases of duplicate registrations, which makes it more difficult for double voting to happen in the first place.
Fraud related to voting for deceased residents is extremely rare, although when it happens, it attracts press attention. It is also worth noting that states are constantly updating their voter registration lists and removing the “deadwood” from those lists; this process is known as list maintenance. A 2024 study by Stewart and Pettigrew found strong evidence that deceased registrants are mostly absent from voter lists, and that election officials have improved their process of removing these people. According to the Election Administration and Voting Survey 2024 Comprehensive Report, more than 21 million voter registration records were removed from voter rolls between the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election. In any event, if we use official statistics to gauge the number of “actual” registrants in a state, the number of people in active status is a better statistic than the total that includes inactive voters.
New developments
States are increasingly adopting new approaches for registering voters. These changes have been prompted by a mix of citizen activism aimed at mobilizing new voters, the concern of public officials with low turnout rates, and the desire to implement new technology to both decrease the cost of registering voters and improve voter list accuracy.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in same-day registration, which permits any voting-eligible resident in a state with this policy to register and cast a vote at the same time. This includes Election Day registration, a type of same-day registration that allows voters to both register and vote on Election Day. State policies differ in whether same-day registration is permitted during early voting or on Election Day (or both), and in which types of voting locations provide this option. Minnesota was the first state to implement Election Day registration in 1974, but for the vast majority of states, this registration policy’s popularity ramped up after 2000. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that as of March 2026, 26 states and D.C. have implemented some form of same-day voter registration. (It is important to clarify that North Dakota is not included in this count, and it does not require formal voter registration.) Of these 26 states, 16 allow their citizens to register and vote simultaneously during the early voting period and Election Day. Four states allow only Election Day registration (Maine, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming), three states permit same-day registration only during the early voting period (Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina), and two states only allow same-day registration to vote for the U.S. president (Alaska and Rhode Island).
The second development is online voter registration (OVR). As the name implies, online voter registration allows citizens to register to vote or update their information online. In general, a voter fills out a registration form electronically, which is then verified by voting officials at the state level. Usually, voters using OVR must already have a driver’s license or another form of state identification. OVR was first adopted by Arizona in 2002, and since then, it has been adopted by 42 states and D.C. Arizona’s experience with OVR—which lowered costs and reduced data errors—has spurred a steady increase in state adoptions.
The final notable recent change in voter registration is automatic (or automated) voter registration (AVR). AVR goes one step further than the traditional “motor voter” system in which citizens are offered the opportunity to register when they get a driver’s license. Instead of this more traditional “opt-in” approach, AVR is an “opt-out” system, in which holders of driver’s licenses are automatically registered to vote unless they explicitly ask to be taken off the voter list. AVR was first enacted by Oregon in 2016. Since then, another 24 states plus D.C. have adopted it.
Though studies of AVR and voter turnout are still preliminary, there are promising findings showing that AVR does increase rates of voter registration significantly across the board. A Brennan Center analysis from 2019 found that Georgia, in particular, nearly doubled its rate of voter registrations after the implementation of the policy. Indeed, the analysis found that all states that implemented AVR saw a rise in registration rates.
While these changes to voter registration systems have all been proposed and made at the state level, the conversation about voter registration has also become increasingly national. Most notably, the SAVE America Act was introduced to the U.S. Congress in early 2026 and would encourage states to more strictly enforce the requirement that only U.S. citizens may vote in federal and state elections. This bill would amend the NVRA to require all eligible voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. (Examples of documents that prove citizenship include birth certificates, U.S. passports, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, a Certificate of Citizenship, or a Certificate of Naturalization.) The Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland reports that 9% of eligible voters (about 21.3 million people) lack easy access to a document proving their citizenship, indicating that a significant portion of the American electorate would have much more difficulty registering if this Act is passed.
Suggested Readings
Brennan Center for Justice | Automatic Voter Registration, a Summary
Burden, Barry C. 2014. "Registration and Voting, A View from the Top." In The Measure of American Elections, eds. Barry C. Burden and Charles Stewart III. New York: Cambridge University Press, 40–60.
Census | Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2024
Center for American Progress | Who votes with automatic voter registration?
Harris, Joseph. 1929. Registration of Voters in the United States. Brookings Institution.
Key, V.O Jr. 1949. Southern Politics in State and Nation. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Keyssar, Alexander. 2000. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books.
MIT Election Data and Science Lab. Voter List Maintenance.
MIT Election Data and Science Lab. Automatic Voter Registration.
National Conference of State Legislatures | Automatic Voter Registration
National Conference of State Legislatures | Same Day Voter Registration
National Conference of State Legislatures | Online Voter Registration
National Conference of State Legislatures | 9 Things to Know About the Proposed SAVE America Act
U.S. Election Assistance Commission | National Voter Registration Act Studies
U.S. Election Assistance Commission | Studies and Reports
Woodward, C. Vann. 1955. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Oxford University Press.