Personal Registration Systems Discourage Voter Participation

by Richard J. Cadson*

0 vote in all but one of the 50 American states (North Dakota is the ex- T ception) a citizen must first appear in person before designated government officials sometime before election day and declare his eligibility under state law. Once he has established his credentials-usually, but not always, a per- functory exercise-his name is entered on the roster of qualified electors. This fundamental act of personal registration is increasingly being cited as a major cause of the dismal record of electoral participation in the United States.

Non-voting in American presidential elections continues to increase-from 39 million in 1960 to 43 million in 1964 and 47 million in 1968. In 1968 the non-voters exceeded by 17 million the total of those who voted for President Nixon. For every vote separating the two major candidates in that election there were 108 people who did not vote. Generally more than one-third of the potential electorate does not vote in presidential elections, and up to half in congressional elections.

The non-voting population is not only large and getting larger, i t is also made up disproportionately of the young, the urban poor, Blacks, American Indians and Chicanos. The groups with the greatest stake in social change are the least likely to participate in one of the basic mechanisms for generating political power.

This fall the United States Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service held hearings on several plans to increase voter turnout through a national system of voter registration administered by a federal agency such as the Bureau of the Census or the Internal Revenue Service. With few excep- tions those testifying placed the blame for poor voter turnout on the complex tangle of state registration requirements now in effect. In the 1968 presidential election, for example, only 60.9 percent of the voting age population cast ballots, Of those registered, however, 89.4 percent cast votes, a figure which compares favorably to the turnout in any other Western democracy. Once people are registered to vote i t seems they do so in relatively acceptable numbers.

* Richard J. Carlson is directing the election systems study for the National Municipal League. The project is being undertaken jointly with the League of Women Voters Education Fund. He is a former staff member of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois, and was research coordinator for the recent Illinois state constitutional convention.

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Evidence gathered by political scientists tends to support the proposition that personal registration depresses voter turnout. In 1967 Stanley Kelley, Jr., and his associates analyzed variations in voter turnout among 104 large cities in the 1960 presidential election and found that they were most directly related to differences in the number of eligible voters who were registered. They concluded that “registration requirements are a more effective deterrent to voting than anything that normally operated to deter citizens from voting once they have registered.”’

Walter Dean Burnham of Washington University in St. Louis has studied the relationship between personal registration systems and voting participation. Using data from Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania he has demonstrated that voter turnout in predominantly urban counties with full or partial registration requirements tends to be significantly lower than in counties without registra- tion. His research indicates that as counties acquire personal registration systems turnout can fall as much as 8-12 percent from prior levels.

Recent evidence also shows that the growing non-voting population is made up largely of groups on the social and economic periphery. A study of voting in Baltimore in 1960 revealed that turnout among blue-collar workers was only half that of people in professional-managerial occupations. The author suggested that his results were “roughly the equivalent of saying that, in Baltimore, upperclass whites have in reality a political weight approxi- mately twice that of the lower classes, whether white or black.”2

The Census Bureau’s survey of Voting and Registration in the Election of 1968 reported that non-voters were most likely to be “women, persons under 35 years of age and to a lesser degree those 65 and older, Negroes, residents of the South, those of low educational level, those with small family incomes, and persons in unskilled occupations such as laborers (both industrial and agricul- tural) and private household workers.”

It is not surprising that registration and voting rates are lowest at the bot- tom of the American class structure where people are more likely to experience registration requirements as obstacles to participation. I t may be extremely difficult for a blue-collar worker to find time to visit a registration office that is open only during working hours. Transportation costs to remote locations will be more of an impediment for the poor than the affluent. The social skills needed to meet complicated requirements are more likely to be found among the well-educated and the well-to-do.

Personal registration requirements were originally intended to prevent fraud by establishing lists of eligible voters well in advance of election day. In an early study, Joseph P. Harris reported that before the enactment of

1 “Registration and Voting: Putting First Things First,” American Political Science

2 Walter Dean Burnham, “Registration Statutes and Electoral Partidpation” (mimeo, Review (June 1967), p. 362.

n.d.), p. 8.

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registration laws i t was not unusual for armed men to appear at the polls and demand, and get, the right to vote. It was Harris’ judgment that personal registration was “the very foundation upon which an honest election system must rest.”s

The emergence of personal registration requirements corresponds roughly to the period in American history when industrial expansion and urbanization were at their peak. When the character of life was primarily rural and small- town, no registration lists were compiled. Anyone wishing to vote simply showed up at the polls on election day. As society became more anonymous and impersonal, however, and as mass immigration filled the cities with newcomers to political life, pressures developed to control the polyglot urban populations and the excesses of the political machines.

Between 1890 and 1920 most states adopted measures intended to erode the power of the urban political parties. Among them were the Australian ballot, the direct primary, nonpartisan elections and personal registration requirements. I t was during this period that participation in presidential elec- tions dropped sharply. In fact the high levels of participation experienced in the late nineteenth century have never been approximated since. Between 1864 and 1900 the average presidential turnout was 76.8 percent of the eligible electorate. The comparable figure for the period 1904-1968 was only 59.2 percent.

The American reliance on personal registration is unique among democratic nations and helps explain the sharp differences in voter participation between the United States and other countries. The United States is the only country that holds free elections in which the responsibility for maintaining lists of eligible voters rests almost entirely with individual initiative rather than with an agency of the state.

In Britain, for example, voter lists are compiled annually by electoral registration officers in each election district who either mail standard forms or canvass door to door. In Canada, which has a federal system similar to our own, “enumerators’, go to each household in each election district in urban areas. The canvassing takes place over a six-day period before each parlia- mentary election and the most recent reports indicate that 98 percent of all eligible voters in Canada were actually registered.

The belief in individual initiative and self-reliance is deeply imbedded in the American value system and nowhere is its persistence more apparent than in the conduct of elections. The almost universal acceptance of personal registration requirements in the United States is evidence of a widespread belief that voting is more a privilege the individual has to earn than a right which is an attribute of adult citizenship.

8 Joseph P. Harris, Registration of Voters in the United States (Washington, D. C.: T h e Brooking3 Institution, 1929), p. 4.

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The traditional vehicles for increasing electoral participation have been registration drives or civic campaigns to “get-out-the-vote.” Reliance on the former raises the important question of the desirability of a mechanism that depends on the financial support of established vested interests. Beyond that, however, is the simple question of effectiveness. Penn Kimball of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism recently completed a study of voting participation among urban minorities. He reports that his data showed “time and again a history of limited returns in comparison to outpourings of effort and money to increase the number of eligible voters within the structure presently built into the laws of all but one of the 50 states.”

If personal registration is the obstacle to full voting opportunity that it seems to be, what can be done to moderate its undesirable consequences?

No one has yet suggested the complete removal of registration requirements. Compiling lists of eligible voters in advance of election day remains a necessity, particularly in urban areas where even close neighbors are virtual strangers. Most suggested solutions are variations on the theme of greater government involvement in the process.

In 1968 the Committee for Economic Development recommended uniform national standards for voter registration in federal elections (Financing (I Better Election System). If the states failed to enact uniform laws, CED rec- ommended a national system administered by a federal agency such as the Census Bureau or the Post Office. I t was suggested that the Post Office could easily compile preliminary registration lists by distributing applications to every mailing address in the country. The preliminary lists would be subject to challenge by individuals and political parties. Final lists would be dis- tributed to local election officials under the auspices of the federal government. Local officials could also use the lists in state and local elections by adopting the federal standards.

Several similar plans were introduced in Congress this year. The Committee on Post Office and Civil Service has held hearings on four bills sponsored by Senate Democrats that involve varying degrees of governmental responsibility. Three of the four proposals involve the concept of a federal postcard registra- tion system. The fourth suggests door-to-door canvassing in presidential elec- tion years.

Under the plan suggested by Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, registration forms would be sent out by the Internal Revenue Service with its annual tax forms. Humphrey noted that the IRS reaches 95 percent of the American people. To reach those not covered additional forms would be available at post offices. Applicants would have to satisfy state registration requirements to be eligible for federal registration.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy proposed the creation of a bipartisan agency within the Census Bureau to administer federal postcard registration. Forms

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would be available at post offices and other federal buildings. They would be sent to the new agency where precinct voter lists would be compiled by com- puter for distribution to appropriate state and local officials. Federal registra- tion would be open up to 30 days before any federal election. Officials could use the lists for state and local elections by adopting the federal standards. “In a sense,” Senator Kennedy explained, “the federal government would simply be carrying out the ministerial function of registering voters. State and local officials would retain full control over the registration lists, but they would be spared the enormous financial and administrative burden of corn- piling them.”

The universal voter enrollment plan proposed by Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii was originally suggested in 1970 by the Freedom to Vote Task Force of the Democratic National Committee. The plan provides for quadrennial enrollment of voters during a three-week period prior to each presidential election. Enrollment officers would be unpaid volunteers supervised by a direc- tor in each of the 435 congressional districts. The plan would be administered by a nonpartisan national election commission appointed by the President. The director of the Bureau of the Census would serve as a member of the corn- mission and as national director of enrollment.

Enrollment officers would make two calls at every residence in the district if all voting age residents were not contacted on the first visit. To be enrolled an individual must meet all state qualifications for voting except residence, which is now 30 days in presidential elections under the Voting Rights Act amendments of 1970. If permanent possession is not requested by state officials, the district enrollment roll is destroyed 30 days after the election.

Under the bill sponsored by committee Chairman Gale McGee the Census Bureau would mail forms to each household to be completed and sent to local registration officials. There would be a 30-day residence requirement for federal elections. States would still be able to set different standards for state and local eIections but could be reimbursed for 15 percent of their registration costs if they adopted the postcard system and up to 30 percent if they adopted a 30-day residence requirement.

On November 2 the committee approved the bill sponsored by Chairman McGee, six to three. Republican Senator Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma joined with the five Democrats on the committee to approve the plan. The bill should come up for passage sometime before the end of the 1971 session, now tenta- tively scheduled for this month. Prospects for Senate passage are mildly favorable, but the House is not expected to be similarly inclined.

Historically the states have enjoyed virtual hegemony over the conduct of elections. Supreme Court decisions in the last decade, however, have steadily expanded the scope of federal authority over voting rights beyond the tradi- tional concern with racial discrimination. The landmark case of Oregon v.

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Mitchell simultaneously affirmed the power of Congress to lower the voting age to 18 in federal elections and struck down that part of the Voting Rights Act amendments of 1970 that set the same standard for state and local elec- tions. The court also unanimously upheld that section of the act prohibiting literacy tests in all areas of the nation until August 6, 1975. Congressional power to regulate federal elections appears well established, and i t seems that some congressional action is likely at some time to meet the inequities in the personal registration systems of the states.

Changes in the composition of the electorate inevitably have real or per- ceived political consequences in a democracy. Opening up the registration process could mean adding voters who have traditional allegiances to the Democratic party, although the practical effect of registration reform is by no means clear. Republicans have generally been less enthusiastic about expanding the electorate than Democrats. Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, the Republican national chairman, submitted a statement to the Senate Post Office Committee arguing that “voter apathy, not prohibitive voter registration re- quirements, is the major cause of low voter registration and turnout.” Dole also said that the conduct of elections was more properly the concern of the states. His comments were later echoed by a deputy assistant attorney general from the Department of Justice, representing the Nixon administra- tion.

Whatever the partisan advantages or disadvantages of electoral reform efforts, the paramount value in a democracy should be the full, equitable ex- tension of the franchise and, thereby, the promise of the fourteenth amend- ment.

The problems posed by the personal registration systems of the states, as well as other features of our election system, are now being highlighted by the dramatic addition of millions of vocal young people to the electorate. They are finding out that the exercise of their newly-won franchise is contingent on the cooperation of local registrars and the satisfaction of obscure regulations. Their subsequent indignation may help to accelerate a serious reexamination of the whole premise on which the system rests.

The goal of election reform should not be 100 percent participation. In a voluntary system there will always be a certain amount of voter apathy and disinterest. The decision not to vote is as important as the one to participate. The choice, however, should be equally available to everyone. Democracy in America ultimately depends on popular support. Increasingly, it seems, many people are coming to believe that popular support is more likely to evolve if the right to participate in elections is an attribute of adult citizenship, not a reward for good behavior.