IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v72y1978i01p22-45_15.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Registration Laws on Voter Turnout

Author

Listed:
  • Rosenstone, Steven J.
  • Wolfinger, Raymond E.

Abstract

After the drastic relaxation of voter registration requirements in the 1960s, do present state laws keep people away from the polls? More specifically, which provisions have how much effect on what kinds of people? We have answered these questions with data from the Current Population Survey conducted by the Census Bureau in November 1972.State registration laws reduced turnout in the 1972 presidential election by about nine percentage points. The impact of the laws was heaviest in the South and on less educated people of both races. Early deadlines for registration and limited registration office hours were the biggest impediments to turnout.Contrary to expectations, changing these requirements would not substantially alter the character of the electorate. The voting population would be faintly less affluent and educated; the biggest difference would be a matter of one or two percentage points. In strictly political terms, the change would be even fainter–a gain for the Democrats of less than half a percent.

Suggested Citation

  • Rosenstone, Steven J. & Wolfinger, Raymond E., 1978. "The Effect of Registration Laws on Voter Turnout," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 22-45, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:72:y:1978:i:01:p:22-45_15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400154140/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Foley & Homer Steedly, 1980. "Levels, trends and determinants of pluralism: A comparative analysis of U.S. counties," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 33-46, March.
    2. Lee Dutter, 1985. "An application of the multicandidate calculus of voting to the 1972 and 1976 German federal elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 405-424, January.
    3. Jan Fagerberg & Maryann P. Feldman & Martin Srholec, 2014. "Technological dynamics and social capability: US states and European nations," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 313-337.
    4. Andersen, Jørgen Juel & Fiva, Jon H. & Natvik, Gisle James, 2014. "Voting when the stakes are high," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 157-166.
    5. Donald P. Green & Jennifer K. Smith, 2003. "Professionalization of Campaigns and the Secret History of Collective Action Problems," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 15(3), pages 321-339, July.
    6. Christine Fauvelle-Aymar & Abel François, 2018. "Place of registration and place of residence: the non-linear detrimental impact of transportation cost on electoral participation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 405-440, September.
    7. Oliver Engist & Felix Schafmeister, 2022. "Do political protests mobilize voters? Evidence from the Black Lives Matter protests," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 193(3), pages 293-313, December.
    8. Alejandro Corvalan & Paulo Cox, 2014. "`Can I register to vote before I am 18?'Information Costs and Participation," Working Papers 60, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad Diego Portales.
    9. Tony Caporale & Marc Poitras, 2014. "Voter turnout in US presidential elections: does Carville’s law explain the time series?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(29), pages 3630-3638, October.
    10. Knack, Stephen, 1993. "Does motor voter work? Evidence from state-level data," MPRA Paper 28079, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 1994.
    11. Nadia Fiorino & Nicola Pontarollo & Roberto Ricciuti, 2016. "Voter Turnout in European Parliament Elections: A Spatial Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 5910, CESifo.
    12. John Carter, 1984. "Early projections and voter turnout in the 1980 presidential election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 195-202, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:72:y:1978:i:01:p:22-45_15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.