Reducing Barriers to the Ballot: The Impact of Automatic Voter Registration on Youth Voter Turnout in the United States

open_access
Open Access
Author:
Hage, Logan
Area of Honors:
Political Science
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Christopher Alan Beem, Thesis Supervisor
Matthew Richard Golder, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
electoral reform
election administration
youth turnout
voting
automatic voter registration
Abstract:
This thesis examines whether automatic voter registration (AVR) reduces barriers to political participation and subsequently increases youth turnout in the United States. Drawing on the cost-of-voting framework, the study argues that policies that lower administrative burdens on voter registration should disproportionately benefit younger voters, who face greater structural and informational barriers to participation. Using state-level data from 2012-2024, the results indicate that AVR is associated with higher levels of youth voter turnout in simple regression analyses; however, when accounting for other electoral policies and contextual factors, only back-end AVR (that is, when the citizen is offered the opportunity to opt out of registration after a transaction as opposed to at the time of a transaction) remains statistically significant. This suggests that AVR systems with greater opt-out costs are more efficient in maintaining registered voters. Causal estimates using a staggered difference-in-differences design were not statistically significant, likely due to limited pre- and post-treatment observations. The mechanism analysis indicated that youth voter registration is the mechanism by which AVR reduces participation barriers. An age-differential analysis revealed that while turnout increases with age overall, the effect of AVR declines across age groups. This indicates that AVR produces significantly larger benefits among younger voters than older voters; moreover, it suggests that back-end AVR can reduce barriers to participation which highlights the significance of institutional design in shaping democratic participation. Additionally, AVR reduces participation barriers most effectively for youth voters, helping to narrow persistent age-based turnout gaps. Overall, AVR appears to be a meaningful but limited reform whose effectiveness depends on both institutional design and demographic context.