Voter Registration and Turnout in the United States

In a democracy, voting is the most fundamental act of political participation and therefore holds a central location in the study of political behavior. One significant research tradition focuses on the relationship between registration and turnout and raises important and related questions. How do registration laws influence turnout levels? What types of people are most affected by them? What are the partisan implications of registration requirements? Spanning the late nineteenth through early twenty-first centuries, this essay places these questions in the appropriate theoretical context and then answers them.Previously Benjamin Highton was an APSA Congressional Fellow and worked for Senator Paul Wellstone on health and welfare policy. He appreciates the advice and criticism from Henry Brady, Jennifer Hochschild, Randolph Siverson, Raymond Wolfinger, and the anonymous referees for Perspectives on Politics.