Voter registration in the United States
All US states and territories, except North Dakota, require voter registration by eligible citizens before they can vote in federal, state and local elections. In North Dakota, cities in the state may register voters for city elections, and in other cases voters must provide identification and proof of entitlement to vote at the polling place before being permitted to vote. Voter registration takes place at the county level in many states or at the municipal level in several states. Many states set cutoff dates for registration or to update details, ranging from two to four weeks before an election, while 25 states and Washington, D.C. have same-day voter registration, which enables eligible citizens to register or update their registration on the same day they cast their vote. In states that permit early voting, and have voter registration, the prospective voter must be registered before casting a vote.
Some historical registration requirements, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses, were part of the systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Jim Crow South.
More recently, several common misconceptions have developed around the supposed consequences of registering to vote—that it exposes the person to the military draft, or affects car insurance rates, or requires a permanent address. Despite being untrue, these beliefs are sometimes deterrents for registration. The impact and fairness of other requirements, such as voter identification laws, are the subject of ongoing debate.
The legal case Pitts v. Black in 1984 established that eligible American voters residing in non-conventional accommodations, like a park bench, cannot be refused to register to vote, allowing people experiencing homelessness to participate in elections.
A 2023 study by the US Election Assistance Commission found that 85.4% of the citizen voting age population in the United States were registered to vote at the time of the 2022 general elections, more than 203 million US citizens.
While voters were historically required to register at government offices by a certain date before an election, the federal government in the mid-1990s made efforts to increase turnout by easing the registration process. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires state governments to either provide uniform opt-in registration services through drivers' license registration centers, disability centers, schools, libraries, and mail-in registration, or to allow Election Day voter registration, where voters can register at polling places immediately prior to voting.
In 2016, Oregon became the first state to make voter registration fully automatic when issuing driver licenses and ID cards, since followed by 15 more states and the District of Columbia. Political parties and other organizations sometimes hold voter registration drives to register new voters.
In 31 states and the District of Columbia, persons registering to vote may at the same time declare an affiliation with a political party.
History
In 1800, Massachusetts was the first state to require voter registration as a prerequisite for voting in the state. This was followed by Maine, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. During the 19th century, and especially after the Civil War, more states and cities set a voter registration as a prerequisite to voting, partially to prevent voting by immigrants in cities. However, it was not until 1913 when Nebraska became the first state to establish a permanent statewide voter register, overseen by an election commissioner.According to a 2020 study, voter registration laws adopted in the period 1880–1916 reduced turnout as much as 19%.
North Dakota abolished voter registration in 1951 for state and federal elections, the only state to do so. Since 2004 it has required voters to produce ID at time of casting a vote. This has led to North Dakota being accused of voter suppression because many Native American were denied a vote because the address on their tribal IDs had a post office box address, which continues to be a common practice.
In 2002, Arizona made online voter registration available. In 2016, Oregon became the first state to implement a fully automatic voter registration system tied to the process of issuing driver licenses and ID cards.
In March 2025, Trump executive order on "enforcing restrictions of non-citizens from registering to vote or voting through use of databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security" laid the groundwork for DOGE to integrate Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements with data from the Social Security Administration to enable cross checking voter registration and citizenship status via social security numbers. In June 2025, the Supreme Court allowed DOGE to access sensitive data in the SSA.
No registration jurisdiction
is the only state that does not have voter registration, which was abolished in 1951, although cities in North Dakota may register voters for city elections. In North Dakota voters must provide identification and proof of entitlement to vote at the polling place before being permitted to vote.North Dakota is exempt from the requirements of the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Because of this exemption, North Dakota has since 2004 required voters to produce an approved form of ID before being able to vote, one of which was a tribe ID commonly used by Native Americans. It was common and lawful for a post office box to be used on this ID, instead of a residential address, because there are no street addresses on reservations. In 2016, a change required tribal ID to have a residential address to be accepted, and North Dakota has been accused of voter suppression with many Native Americans being denied a vote because they did not have an approved form of ID with a residential address.
North Dakota's ID law especially adversely affected large numbers of Native Americans, with almost a quarter of Native Americans in the state, otherwise eligible to vote, being denied a vote on the basis that they do not have proper ID; compared to 12% of non-Indians. A judge overturned the ID law in July 2016, also saying: "The undisputed evidence before the Court reveals that voter fraud in North Dakota has been virtually non-existent." However, the denial of a vote on this basis was also an issue in the 2018 mid-term election.
Federal jurisdiction
While the United States Congress has jurisdiction over laws applying to federal elections, it has deferred most aspects of election law to the states. The United States Constitution prohibits states from restricting voting rights in ways that infringe on a person's right to equal protection under the law, on the basis of race, on the basis of sex, on the basis of having failed to pay a poll tax or any tax, or on the basis of age for persons age 18 and older. The administration of elections, however, vary widely across jurisdictions.In general, US citizens over the age of 18 have the right to vote in federal elections. In a few cases, permanent residents have registered to vote and have cast ballots without realizing that doing so was illegal. Non-citizens convicted in criminal court of having made a false claim of citizenship for the purpose of registering to vote in a federal election can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year. Deportation and removal proceedings have resulted from several such cases. Some municipalities allow non-citizen residents to vote in municipal or school district elections.
All states except Maine and Vermont deny the vote to convicted felons for some duration, a practice known as felony disenfranchisement. In 16 states, voting is only prohibited during incarceration. 21 states additionally prohibit voting during parole or probation but allow voting after. Eleven states either indefinitely suspend voting rights or require special action to have voting rights restored.
Security issues
In 2023 a contractor, WSD Digital, developing a voter registration and e-pollbook system for New Hampshire put in code to link to websites in Russia and used open source software managed by a Russian. New Hampshire found those issues by hiring another company, ReversingLabs, to review the code of the first company.In 2016 Russian hackers probed all states and breached voter registration systems in two states. Breaches have the potential to add, remove or change voters, allowing later addition of ballots in those names.
Effect on participation
A 2012 study by The Pew Charitable Trusts estimates that 24% of the voting-eligible population in the United States are not registered to vote, a percentage that represents "at least 51 million eligible U.S. citizens." The study suggests that registration requirements contribute to discouraging people from exercising their right to vote, thereby causing a lower voter turnout. The extent of discouragement and its effect on increasing the socioeconomic bias of the electorate however remain contested.In a 1980 landmark study, Raymond E. Wolfinger and Steven J. Rosenstone came to the conclusion that less restrictive registration requirements would substantially increase the electoral turnout. According to their probit analysis, if all states adopted the procedures of the most permissive state regulations, which would mean:
- eliminating the closing date
- opening registration offices during the forty-hour work week
- opening registration offices in the evening or on Saturday
- permitting absentee registration for the sick, disabled and absent
Findings such as this have inspired lawmakers to facilitate the registration process, eventually leading to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 that required states to allow voter registration at various public offices, including drivers' license registration centers, disability centers, schools, libraries, as well as mail-in registration, unless a state adopts Election Day voter registration. The way towards passing this piece of federal legislation was however lengthy and rocky, as these reforms were highly contested. In an expanded 1990 edition of their 1988 book, titled "Why Americans still don't vote: and why politicians want it that way," Cloward and Piven argued that the reforms were expected to encourage less-privileged groups which happen to lean towards the Democratic Party.
While the turnout at federal elections did substantially increase following the electoral reforms, the effect fell short of Wolfinger and Rosenstone's expectations while Cloward's and Piven's hope of improving the demographic representativeness of
the electorate wasn't fulfilled at all. Political scientist Adam Berinsky concluded in a 2005 article that the reforms designed to make voting "easier" in their entirety had an opposite effect, actually increasing the preexisting socioeconomic biases by ensuring "that those citizens who are most engaged with the political world – those with politically relevant resources – continue to participate, whereas those individuals without such resources fall by the wayside." As Berinsky reaffirms in a 2016 piece, the only way to increase turnout while improving representativeness is making more people become interested in politics.
The lack of a place of residence, a mailing address or a form of identification are barriers for the homeless to vote.
In a 2012 Pew Research Center study, researchers found that military personnel were disproportionately affected by voter registration errors. Most often these involved members of the military and their families who were deployed overseas.