Week 2 - Same-Day Success?

Welcome back everyone!

Last week, we discussed Stage 1 of my methodology, where I assess the impact of legislation on voter turnout. In pursuing this goal, I start by comparing states’ turnout trends to each other before and after one adopts the policy of Same Day Voter Registration (SDVR).

What is Same Day Voter Registration?

While registration to vote is a requirement to participate with a deadline before Election Day, SDVR allows eligible voters to register and cast their ballot on the same day. Whether that’s only during Election Day, the early voting period alone, or both, depends on the state. As of October, 2024, twenty-three states and Washington D.C have adopted this legislation across a several decades-long timeframe; Wyoming, Washington, and Wisconsin implemented it in the 1970s, while Colorado and Idaho did in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

Current Literature

Same Day Voter Registration has historically elicited mixed reactions. Proponents applaud it for accommodating voters who face accessibility barriers, such as transportation or scheduling costs, and those who wish to get involved very close to the election. Others share concerns about administrative disarray and increases in uninformed or rushed decision-making on the voters’ parts.

Studies on the subject point to hopeful results, where SDVR successfully encourages voter participation. In a study by Grumbach and Hill, published in the Chicago Journals, young voters (aged 18-24) suffer from the usual registration rules since they move frequently yet do not interact with government agencies regularly to update registration information. And according to their Differences-in-differences analysis, SDVR increases turnout among young voters by 3.1 to 7.3 percentage points.

Week 2

Entering the week with this context, I aimed to identify states that would implement Same Day Voter Registration within my range of 2014 to 2024, since my voter turnout data encompasses this time frame. Then, I identify three control states whose voter turnout rates fluctuate similarly before SDVR was implemented, and finally, compare the level of change in their voter turnout afterwards.

Eight states had adopted this policy within my required timeline: New York, Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico, Maryland, Michigan, Utah, and Washington.

Using the strategy tested and refined in Week 1, I grouped similar control states by first calculating their coefficient of variation to categorize them as Low, Medium, and High Volatility states. Within these groups, I found the Euclidean distance of their data to each other, identifying the top 3 best matches to the state with SDVR.

Finally, I calculated the Euclidean distance post-enactment of Same Day Voter Registration, to measure divergence by the increase in the distance value.

This increase occurred for nearly every state in comparison to each of the three control states, with the exceptions of: Virginia to its first and third closest control, and New York to its second and third closest controls.