Election Day Registration: The Second Wave

The number of states with election-day registration (EDR) of voters doubled in the early 1990s, providing a new opportunity to estimate the turnout impact of EDR. Because of some important and neglected features of the "first wave" of EDR states, adopting EDR in the early 1970s, there is good reason to expect this "second wave" to generate larger estimates of EDR's turnout impact. Controlling for other factors, new EDR programs are associated with a turnout increase of about 6 percentage points in the midterm elections (1990 to 1994), and 3 percentage points in the presidential elections (1992 to 1996). Contrary to expectations, these estimates from the "second wave" of EDR states do not exceed those generated by studies of the “first wave” of EDR adoption.