Bump with some updates.
Same-day registration (As of June 7, 2013) - California, Connecticut, and Colorado have recently passed same-day registration with CT's law taking effect July 2013, CO's law sometime later this year, and CA's perhaps in 2014. Maryland also passed same-day registration during its early voting period (but not on Election Day itself) though it won't take effect until January 2016. Democrats in the Nevada state legislature passed a law much like Maryland's but
Governor Sandoval vetoed it. Delaware is
also considering same-day registration this legislative session.
Same-day registration states consistently have
higher turn-out:
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Online voter registration (As of June 7, 2013) - Now available in 12 states with 6 more states recently passing legislation for it or working on implementation. Map (grey = not available, white = in process, green = available):
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Early/absentee voting (As of June 7, 2013) - Washington state is now completely vote-by mail like Oregon. Colorado's same-day registration bill referenced above also has a provision to mail ballots to every registered voter, whether or not they requested absentee status (they're still able to vote in-person instead if they prefer). Minnesota passed no-excuse absentee balloting with the bill taking effect in 2014. The Connecticut state legislature recently
referred a measure to the 2014 ballot to amend the state constitution to authorize early voting. Early/absentee voting map:
^^ The Northeast does stand out here compared to the rest of the country. I know the Republican/coalition controlled state senate in New York has
been blocking early voting and Pennsylvania has a solid gerrymander among other things but Rhode Island and Massachusetts have nothing in the way. No Republican governor like
Christie in New Jersey vetoing early voting and yet they have no online voter registration, no same-day registration, and no early voting. Connecticut's been doing a lot better than them at expanding voting rights.
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Automatic voter registration - This is a new area. No state has passed this yet and Oregon is currently
considering a bill on it with estimates suggesting the bill would raise the percentage of the voting-eligible population that is registered to vote from about 74% to around 93% and potentially even 95%+ as more agencies besides the DMV share data with the Secretary of State (for reference, this registration percentage number
ranges from 59% to 84% among the states with the national average being 71%).
The bill is currently in committee and I'm not sure if it's going to pass this session. Haven't heard anything in about a month and the legislative session ends in about four weeks. On the other-hand, even if it fails here, there will be more and more pushes for this as time goes on and states keep adopting online voter registration, something that links their statewide voter databases to their statewide DMV databases.