WP: States are registering voters automatically. Here’s how that affects voting

[Virginiá]

More states are registering voters automatically. Here’s how that affects voting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/16/more-states-are-registering-voters-automatically-heres-how-that-affects-voting/?utm_term=.f7efd88d841c

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As the article notes, not only did automatic voter registration significantly help registration of younger, more diverse voters in urban areas, but it also had an impact in lower income rural/agricultural areas. However, it should be noted that Oregon has mail voting, and so all these auto-registered citizens likely got ballots automatically, so the effect of AVR in OR would probably be more significant than in states that have more traditional elections.

As for progress on AVR, Illinois looks poised to implement it ahead of the 2018 election. California has already passed it and it will also be in effect for 2018. Nevada will have AVR on the ballot in '18 for voters to approve, and Massachusetts is also considering it right now.

@NOVA Green: what are your thoughts on Oregon's implementation of automatic voter registration, and its effects?

[Antonio the Sixth]

That doesn't sound like a very large increase, but every additional voter is a victory for democracy.

[dead0man]

It's not automatic in NE, but it's stupid easy to do when you get your drivers license.

[Hammy]

It's not automatic in NE, but it's stupid easy to do when you get your drivers license.

It's like that in Georgia too, any time you get your license (or change your address in the office) the back of the form has a place to register to vote as well.

[Adam Griffin]

It's not automatic in NE, but it's stupid easy to do when you get your drivers license.

It's like that in Georgia too, any time you get your license (or change your address in the office) the back of the form has a place to register to vote as well.

We discussed it here a few weeks ago, but didn't GA recently adopt "opt-out" (which is basically AVR) through - presumably - a change in SoS policy (since AVR wasn't passed legislatively), replacing the "opt-in" you're describing?

EDIT: Yes

[NOVA Green]

More states are registering voters automatically. Here’s how that affects voting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/16/more-states-are-registering-voters-automatically-heres-how-that-affects-voting/?utm_term=.f7efd88d841c

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As the article notes, not only did automatic voter registration significantly help registration of younger, more diverse voters in urban areas, but it also had an impact in lower income rural/agricultural areas. However, it should be noted that Oregon has mail voting, and so all these auto-registered citizens likely got ballots automatically, so the effect of AVR in OR would probably be more significant than in states that have more traditional elections.

As for progress on AVR, Illinois looks poised to implement it ahead of the 2018 election. California has already passed it and it will also be in effect for 2018. Nevada will have AVR on the ballot in '18 for voters to approve, and Massachusetts is also considering it right now.

@NOVA Green: what are your thoughts on Oregon's implementation of automatic voter registration, and its effects?

Virginia, thank you for calling my attention to this thread....

Ultimately in a state with a preexisting high voter turnout level, AVR had a minimal impact in terms of electoral outcomes....

Granted, this is in a State that is so overwhelmingly Democratic at the Presidential and US Senate races, not to mention the "upstate/downstate" polarization that it is difficult to discern the 30% of AVR voters (40k/120k) that actually cast ballots in the '16 GE, and their geographical locations within Oregon.

What I can say is that in the relatively small number of heavily Latino Precincts within Oregon (Woodburn, Umatilla Co, Hood River Co), there were significant swings against Trump, as well as net gains for the Democratic Presidential Candidate compared to '08/'12.

The reality is that in Oregon the defection towards 3rd Party candidates at the Presidential Level in '16 well exceeded the support for Ralph Nader, and was much more heavily concentrated among Millennial Voters (<30 Years).

If we look at precinct level results in Oregon, it is pretty clear that AVR increased turnout among younger voters, but most of these votes went to 3rd Party candidates. We can roll through precinct level results from overwhelmingly college precincts in Eugene, Corvallis, Ashland, and Monmouth.

So AVR did marginally increase turnout, did not impact election results, and the Millennial Generation heavily voted "None of the Above" in the '16 Presidential GE Contest.

I'm a huge fan of AVR as a principle, regardless of electoral outcomes or party affiliation....

Voting is a right and not a privilege, and it never ceases to amaze me that not only within the Republican Party, and various "young pups" on Atlas, that there is such an obsession with restricting voting rights that "somehow the other side might win"...

The only impact in Oregon was that more young people voted, minor party candidates surged (Increased %), and people actually had a chance to vote, even though they might have moved a few times since they last upgraded their driver's license....

Nothing to fear Pubs, unless you are in Wisconsin or Michigan, and afraid about young voters not going Libertarian or Green....

[NOVA Green]

Sigh--- so Virginia forced me to take a brief hiatus from some other projects that I am currently working on, when she posed the question last night regarding AVR and publicly solicited my feedback on the subject, asking the opinion of a fellow poster who is from one of the only AVR states in the Nation.

Although I am not privy to the data from the Washington Post article, I am a bit skeptical about some of the conclusions.

I spent 2-3 hours earlier today looking at voter turnout levels between '12 and '16, and then pulled the data of 2010-2016 population increase in Oregon by County, and also looked at the data for % of Pop by County <18, as well as Latino % of the Pop by County, since in certain counties in Oregon we have a large number of H2-A "guestworkers" in the ag sector, that although they might be officially included in US Census Data aren't US Nationals and don't vote in US Elections.

Unfortunately trying to slice and dice precinct level results is more problematic, but still if we look simply at County level results, AVR might well have benefited Republicans more than Democrats....

Let me briefly explain my point with a few admittedly ugly maps (But there is no red and Blue with demographics and turnout)....




So, the counties in Green exceeded their registered ballot returns by >10%, even after adjusting for population changes.

Note that this includes both Columbia and Linn Counties in Western Oregon, not even going into Central Oregon Counties like Jefferson and Crook. (Heavily Trump Counties)

The counties in Gray exceeded '10>'16 Pop increases when it came to '12 vs '16 voter turnout. Again, note the general lack of heavily Democratic counties in the mix....

Yellow Counties were less than the overall increased voter population adjusted for county population increase....

Notably this includes Washington County, which is a large population county in the Western Suburbs of Portland, that used to be a Republican stronghold, and is now key to Democratic statewide election wins.

If we roll down to the "Violet" level we see two major and overwhelmingly Democratic strongholds, Multnomah County (Portland + Gresham), Benton (Corvallis / Oregon State) massively under-performing statewide averages post AVR.

So, at a county level, it appears that AVR benefited Republican Voters in downstate Oregon.

This is even more remarkable considering that there are only three counties in Oregon that experienced a population growth rate >10% between '10 and '16 (Washington County, Deschutes and Hood River County).

The next largest population increases were in Multnomah, and Clackamas County, with Benton County chasing on their heels.

So, now that we have run some turnout numbers post AVR and adjusted for Pop increase, naturally we need to look at where the youth are located (<18 Yrs) to adjust population models accordingly.




So Dark Green= 25% Pop <18 Yrs....
Light Green- 22% Pop <18 Yrs
Gray- 20-22% Pop <18 Yrs
Yellow= <20% Pop <18 Yrs

Fine... that explains some of the numbers in Washington and Hood River County.

Roll into the Latino population by County in Oregon....



Dark Green= 30%+ Latino Counties
Light Green= 25%+ Latino Counties
Dark Yellow= 15%+ Latino Counties
Light Yellow= 10-15% Latino Counties
Gray= 5-10%
Purple= <5%

Now, I could run all of this against a county swing map, and would certainly hate to challenge the Washington Post on their sources and data, it would be difficult to make a solid argument that AVR benefited Democratic candidates in the 2016 General Election in Oregon....

Now, the devil is always in the details, and I suspect that in certain precincts Democratic candidates benefited as a result of AVR, but if there was any benefit it was only at a statewide level, even then narrowly around the margins, vs  where we saw the highest increase in new voters adjusted for population, that occurred most heavily in Republican dominated Counties.

[pbrower2a]

In a state that has a very low participation rate for voting, like Indiana, automatic registration and especially vote by mail could swing elections strongly Democratic. Indiana has demographics similar to those of Ohio.

[Virginiá]

Thanks for the input!

Now, I could run all of this against a county swing map, and would certainly hate to challenge the Washington Post on their sources and data, it would be difficult to make a solid argument that AVR benefited Democratic candidates in the 2016 General Election in Oregon....

There was also an argument that the switch to (mostly) mail voting in Colorado did not quite help Democrats like they might have been expecting, even with the creation of county-wide voting centers that allowed same-day registration. Perhaps if they had just done SDR, but the mail component might have 'activated' a lot of Republican votes that were relatively low-propensity.

I would hope that this would dissuade Republicans from rejecting a common-sense reform purely based on partisan grounds. Turnout-increasing voter services aren't all equal, and won't always favor any one party over the other, or at least the party most commonly thought.

[NOVA Green]

Since Professor Virginia always assigns difficult research projects to the class, and I have had the luxery of some extra time on my hands these past few days, I have taken the liberty of trying to drill down into further detail the impact of AVR in Oregon.

Several key initial points:

1.) The impact of AVR in Oregon is not transferable to any other state in the Union, for multiple reasons:

A.) Oregon has for almost two decades been a univeral Vote-By-Mail (VbM) State, and registering to vote has long been easily accessible from the days of voter registration cards in Phone Books, Government Buildings, and now via online mechanisms.

B.) Voter turnout levels in Oregon have long been in the top ten States in the US during Presidential Election Years

C.) Obviously as a fairly solidly Democratic State at the Presidential and US Senate level, and with 4/5 US House CDs haven been in Democratic hands for Decades, the overall political impact and significance is relatively minimal, unless there is a close Statewide Election for Oregon Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, and the like.

2.) If we look at AVR in Oregon, most of the "new" voters registered and whom actually voted post AVR, are simply cannibilized voters who typically would have self-registered through the plethora of options available in a Presidential Election year.

Let's start with the total increase in Registered voters post AVR, and look at the following chart:



So, the impact of AVR was to automatically register a ton of voters 272k, that unless they chose an "opt-out", or select a political party, where automatically registered to vote as Non-Affiliated-Voters.

On the surface in Oregon, AVR appeared to be a huge success, but how many of these newly registered voters actually voted? Not that many overall....



If we look at the data, it appears that registered Democratic Voters increased a bit beyond Republican registered Voters, but roughly 70% of change in registered voters between '08 and '16 were actually NAV voters.

Ok--- If we look at the the total increase in votes in Oregon between '08 and '16, we see an 8.1% increase in Dem/Rep/NAV Votes between '08 and '16 (Did not include minor parties in this data), when the population of the state increased 6.4% between '10 and '15.... If we add the data from '08-'16, it is more likely that the population increase in Oregon was closer to 7.5%.

3.) The obvious next question is how did NAVs vote in Oregon in the '16 Presidential Election, since this is the population most impacted by AVR?

To answer this question I ran the numbers by County and looked at the total votes for President by Party, (including 3rd Party Candidates/Write-Ins) versus the voters registerd by Party (Incl 3rd Party) to attempt to assess how NAVs voted.

The Methodology is far from perfect.... the math was based on an assumption that 100% of Democrats voted for HRC, 100% of Republicans voted for Trump, 100% of registered 3rd Part Voters voted 3rd Party....

I then subtracted by County the % of voters that didn't vote for a Presidential Candidate.



These results are pretty shocking....

Counties in Yellow are counties where HRC did not even match the total number of registered Democrats in the County, regardless of NAVs....

These are places with not only the highest % of Trump Democrats, but also many NAV voters who will vote downballot Democrat, even when they don't vote top-ticket Dem.

Counties in Dark Blue.... Dem's exceeded their RV numbers, but the overwhelming proportion of NAVs would have voted Republican....

Counties in Light Blue.... Republicans won the NAV by <15%... Note that this includes the heavily Democratic stronghold of Lane County (Eugene-Springfield).

What is left.... a small light Pink County in the SE suburbs of Portland (Clackamas), where Dem's might have won NAVs by 5%.

Benton County--- University County with many skilled professionals in the Tech & Medical Sector as well.... NAVs have always tended to vote Democratic at a Presidential level since George W. Bush and the Iraq War.

Hood River--- Small County, with not only one of the highest % of Latinos in Oregon, but additionally home to a large alternative-lifestyle community.

Multnomah---- Well.... the collapse of support for the Pub nominee among working-class and increasingly Multi-Ethnic Latino & Asian-American precincts in East County, combined with wealthier Indies and Pubs in wealthier West Portland, definitely had an impact, regardless of demographics of new residents moving to the City/County.

Washington--- This is a bit trickier, but the actual increase in new voters is less than one might expect considering population increases within the County.

I'll probably need to roll some numbers focused specificially on the Tri-Counties, and add in some data already compiled by County for 3rd Party Voting, but still call me skepticle about the impact of AVR on Democratic Party election results, let alone overall statewide turnout levels, despite the National Media hype.

Don't get me wrong.... I fully believe in AVR and expansion of VBM, but in the case of Oregon, it really doesn't appear to have had much of an impact in terms of overall new voters turning out, let alone electoral impact.

[Virginiá]

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NAV is the default, and voters must return a card choosing their affiliation (if they want it). I assumed most voters would never end up doing this, and honestly, the state ought to do something to remedy this - maybe add an option to each ballot to select an affiliation. This is really something people might do if it right in front of them, but are not going to go out of their way to do so. Unfortunately, a lot of aspects of our elections are like that.

Personally, my belief is that it is better if as many people vote as possible, and that the state make it as easy as reasonably possible. I loathe the idea of "if they are responsible enough, they will do it," which is touted by conservatives. If we're going to hold elections that choose people to make decisions effecting everyone, we should do all we can to enable larger turnout, so that there is a large enough consensus. People just don't operate the way conservatives think or want.

Don't get me wrong.... I fully believe in AVR and expansion of VBM, but in the case of Oregon, it really doesn't appear to have had much of an impact in terms of overall new voters turning out, let alone electoral impact.

It might be that the portion of the electorate that is truly open to voting is pretty much exhausted. I'm curious if there are segments of minorities and young people who don't vote because they aren't receiving mail properly (or checking it), and might be coaxed into voting if there was an actual polling places at their school or in their neighborhood. However, that is a very expensive option and with a culture of voting by mail, I'm not sure it would help much.

Not all turnout issues can be solved by simply making it easier to vote. The only other thing the government can do is actually force people to send in a ballot (even if it is blank), or fining them, as some other western countries do. Otherwise, I think a lot of people will continue to abstain from voting.

[NOVA Green]

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NAV is the default, and voters must return a card choosing their affiliation (if they want it). I assumed most voters would never end up doing this, and honestly, the state ought to do something to remedy this - maybe add an option to each ballot to select an affiliation. This is really something people might do if it right in front of them, but are not going to go out of their way to do so. Unfortunately, a lot of aspects of our elections are like that.

Personally, my belief is that it is better if as many people vote as possible, and that the state make it as easy as reasonably possible. I loathe the idea of "if they are responsible enough, they will do it," which is touted by conservatives. If we're going to hold elections that choose people to make decisions effecting everyone, we should do all we can to enable larger turnout, so that there is a large enough consensus. People just don't operate the way conservatives think or want.

Don't get me wrong.... I fully believe in AVR and expansion of VBM, but in the case of Oregon, it really doesn't appear to have had much of an impact in terms of overall new voters turning out, let alone electoral impact.

It might be that the portion of the electorate that is truly open to voting is pretty much exhausted. I'm curious if there are segments of minorities and young people who don't vote because they aren't receiving mail properly (or checking it), and might be coaxed into voting if there was an actual polling places at their school or in their neighborhood. However, that is a very expensive option and with a culture of voting by mail, I'm not sure it would help much.

Not all turnout issues can be solved by simply making it easier to vote. The only other thing the government can do is actually force people to send in a ballot (even if it is blank), or fining them, as some other western countries do. Otherwise, I think a lot of people will continue to abstain from voting.

So---

1.) AVR did have a marginal impact on overall voter turnout levels in Oregon.... The reality is that voter turnout would likely have been much higher had there not been two extremely unpopular major party candidates on the ballot.

2.) Although I only briefly referenced 3rd Party Level support in my preceding posts, there appears to be a significant correlation between 3rd Party level support and NAVs in Oregon in 2016.

3.) Additionally, as I have posted elsewhere, there is definitely a correlation between Ethnic Minorities in Oregon (Asian-American and Latino-Americans), and electoral swings in various cities and precincts throughout Oregon.

4.) It is also clear that younger voters in Oregon, whom in theory would have been the greatest beneficiaries of AVR, tended to have an extremely high correlation with support for 3rd Party candidates and Write-In votes (Among those who actually voted).

5.) Again, as I stated at the beginning of my post, Oregon is not a transferable poster-child when it comes to AVR for multiple reasons.

6.) Most states will not adopt VbM any time in the immediate future (unfortunately), but for those that do not, items such as same day registration (Not practical in VbM states) and AVR will definitely increase overall turnout to a much more significant degree than in a State like Oregon.

[NOVA Green]

One very important item that I inadvertently neglected in my preceding post(s) was that AVR is still a very new experiment.

We only have one data point to work off of, in an election where in general both major party candidates were not view favorably in Oregon.

What will the data from the 2018 midterms show?

What if in 2020 there are major Party Presidential nominees that actually excite and enthuse those voters that benefit the most from AVR (Namely younger voters and those that have moved around a bit, disengaged from politics, etc...)

[Virginiá]

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-oregon-increased-voter-turnout-more-than-any-other-state/
http://www.demos.org/publication/oregon-automatic-voter-registration-methodology-and-data

Lots of charts!