The Poll after the poll showed the high level of enthusiasm you are voting in the general election in 2020, and in the beginning of the year, voter registration surged to match that excitement. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic to hit. New registrations have fallen off the cliff.
The spring of a presidential election year, and it is often a busy time for adding new voters to the rolls, and a recent study from the Center for Innovation and Election Researcha nonprofit organization that aims to improve voter turnout and election security, it shows the registration numbers were even stronger in the early 2020’s death and the early end of 2016. But things changed dramatically in March, at least in the 12 places where Genesis Brand or CEIR were able to obtain data on ” new voters, a category that includes first-time voters, voters who recently moved to the state and in some states (Texas for example) even voters who moved between counties in the state.
Take Florida, for example, where 109,859 new registered voters in February of this year, compared to 87,351 registrants in February of 2016. But in April 2020, only 21,031 new registered voters, compared with 52,508 in by the end of 2016. The same pattern ‘holds in 10 other states, plus Washington, D. C.: Each of the one registered fewer new voters in the April 2020 than in April 2016, including in states where online voter registration is available.
Currently, 39 states, plus Washington, D. C., offer the ability to register to vote onlineand on the 40th (Oklahoma and texas) is expected to implement it this year. However, in the three places for which we have the relevant data (Florida, Maryland, and Washington, online voter registration has not taken off-during-the-pandemic — certainly not enough to make up for the lost experience: in-person registrations. Even in Washington, where the online registrations have ticked up since the beginning of the year, the pace is comparable to 2016: 2,956 people registered online in April and May 2020, and is similar to the 2,771 people who registered online in April and May of 2016.
The fact that the new voter registrations were outpacing the 2016 numbers in January and February was predictable, according to David Becker, the executive director and founder of the CEIR. For one thing, the population growth, means that voter registration always climbs a bit, he said. The expansion of automatic voter registration to make getting on the rolls more convenient than ever in many states, too. Voters were also clearly interested in registering, He said.
“Every piece of data that we had looked at with regard to enthusiasm about engaging in in this presidential election cycle indicated that we had to be prepared for the highest-turnout in the presidential election that almost anyone living had ever seen,” He said, “which makes the decline in March, and especially April, all the more striking.”
Based on the timing, it seems safe to assume that the COVID-19 had ” something to do with the drop-off, but there’s data to back the assumption that up, too. In addition to how many new voters to register, some states track a how these new voters to get their name on the books. In 2016, and in the pre-pandemic months of 2020, the in-person registration at places like departments of motor vehicles, made up a large plurality or even a majority, of the new registrants in the four places, for which we have data on how new voters are registering. But, after the pandemic caused most states to select one’s government office, those registrations dwindled. By contrast, the remote registrations (e.g., an online or by-mail), held relatively steady.
“This is completely expected, but the people are very concerning,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York in the framework of the directors of the a s School of Law. “The coronavirus shut down most of the primary avenues through which the Act to register to vote in: government offices, and all the malls, theaters, and public places where voter registration drives to operate.”
Indeed, the closing of schools and public events like festivals, you will hindered by in-person voter registration drives run by third-party organizations. “We had to planned go-to-850 for high-school leading up to graduation, but the school closed, that the work was clearly disrupted,” said Jeanette Senecal, senior director for the League of Women Voters, who focuses on voter education.
For example, in Florida, the third-party organizations registered with 14,144 voters in the Uk by 2020 — a huge increase from the 1,196 they registered in January of 2016. But in April 2020, as they only registered the 133 voters — down from 3,806 in April 2016.
States and the third-party group can “still get around” social distancing restrictions to get more voters on the poll books, though they. Voto Latino, an organization that works to register, and encourage Latin-Americans to vote, has been operating digitally, almost since its launch and was well prepared to continue its work from the pandemic. It uses a digital you may be to help voters register, which can even work in states like Texas, which does not have online voter registration — the Latino Vote has created an app that makes it easy to fill out the required form, which is then emailed to the voter to print off and mail in.
Danny Turkel, the communications manager for the Latino Vote, said the group ” have you actually seen a surge in voter registration, especially since protests in response to the killing of George, the Band began. “Our original goal search engine optimization for 2020 was to register 500,000 voters,” said Turkel. “The numbers have come in and surged, we are now thinking that we could surpass 500,000.”
So, what kind of people might have been registered if the coronavirus hadn’t struck? Well for one thing, they’re probably disproportionately young. “In any given year, far more young people to register than older people, just because the 18-year-olds age in the [to being able to vote] and young people are more likely to move and need to register at your new address, ” said Kevin Morris, a quantitative researcher focusing on voting rights and elections at the Brennan Center. According to Morris’to date, 57 percent of new registrants in Florida in the first four months of 2016 were under the age of 40, the as were 65 percent of the new registrants in the Region. While the proportions were similar in the beginning of the year 2020, the total number was much lower than in the past, which means that lots of young people aren’t registering-as-usual in the at least one two-key-2020 to the swing states.
Some of these delayed, registrants may never end up registering at all. Though, that we don’t have data for how the pandemic are you affected to the registration in the past (since the U.s. does not have the t faced a similar situation for a good century), Weiser, and if negative, after treatment in another instance, when voter registration dipped due to extenuating circumstances. In May of 2011, Florida passed a new new new new new the bill that placed tough restrictions on the third-party voter registration organizations, prompting many of them, such as the League of Women Votersto stop operating in the state. The restrictions were suspended by the judge in May 2012 but the damage had been done; and the subsequent analysis found that about 14 percent fewer registered voters in 2011 compared to the same period in 2007, with a notable drop following the introduction of the bill, and those registrations never completely caught up. In 2008, more than 1 million new registered voters in Florida. In 2012, fewer than 900,000 made, according to the state’s voter registration data.
Of course, one unusual law in Florida that isn’t exactly analogous to the pandemic, and it is possible that the high level of enthusiasm for this election will be enough to close the gap that COVID-19 created, especially in the states will begin to reopen, and voters return to the registration site like the DMV. So what’s a person to know whether this drop in registrations is permanent. But it is clear is that despite voters’ intense interest in this election, the new coronavirus has already made it harder for new voters to participate in it.
