Tender Branson's MEGA Election 2012 Chart (Population, Turnout, VAP, VEP, etc.)

[Mr. Morden]

Some of these cases of high registered voters / eligible voters ratios (especially Michigan, lol!) could be people who've moved out of the state, are still on the voter rolls, and possibly even still vote absentee.  I still vote in the US (in Washington, since that was the last state I lived in), and am on the voter rolls there, but wouldn't be counted in any kind of Census count of "eligible voters", since I don't actually live in the US.  Of course, very few American citizens actually emigrate from the country altogether, but migration across state borders is common.  Many college students, for example, could be voting in states that they're not currently living in, so how would they be counted in tallies like this?

Would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between population growth and %age of the "eligible" population who's actually registered to vote.  If I'm right, then slow population growth would be correlated with high registration rates.  On the other hand, that could also just be a consequence of slow population growth meaning that the state has a large number of old people, who will on average be more likely to vote than the young.

[Mr. Morden]

In that vein, note that Arizona is the "worst in relative terms".  It's a state with quite a few transplants from other states, no?  How many of those "unregistered" people are simply recent transplants from elsewhere who are registered to vote (and possibly still voting in) whatever state they moved from?

EDIT: Also, what if, nationwide, you have a substantial portion of the population who votes very very rarely?  Say, once every ten years, or even once every twenty years.  If you have a state where there's no migration into or out of the state, they'll have very high registation fractions, simply because the rare voters are all sticking around and staying on the voting rolls, even though they practically never vote.  But if you have a high degree of migration, the rare voters who vote once a decade will be much more likely to live in states where they're not registered.