For Immediate Release:
Tuesday December 4, 2007

For more information contact:
Sujatha Jahagirdar, Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project Program Director 323 309 6120 (cell)
Dave Rosenfeld, Student PIRGs’ National Program Director 310 210 8410 (cell)

A new report released today found that restrictive voting practices practiced in states such as New Mexico and Arizona may depress youth turnout. Entitled Restrictive Voter Registration Laws: Impacts and Short Term Mitigation Strategies, the report found while mitigation efforts can overcome restrictive voting laws to some degree, uniform federal standards are necessary to fully protect the ability of young people to vote.

"While young people will make up a quarter of the nation’s electorate in 2008, restrictive voting laws threaten the ability of many young people to make their voices heard on Election Day," said author Dave Rosenfeld, National Program Director for the Student PIRGs.

The study, conducted in the 2006 election cycle, used a qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine the impact of restrictive voting laws on campuses in New Mexico and Arizona where the Student PIRGs' New Voters Project worked and the potential for mitigation efforts to overcome these barriers.

On-the-ground organizers of voter registration drives at select New Mexico and Arizona campuses experienced several restrictive voting laws. New Mexico law required "all-third party registration agents" to provide an oath to obey all election laws to a local county clerk; and limited the number of forms that registration 'agents' can obtain at a time. Arizona law required a person registering for the first time needed to present an Arizona driver's license number. This requirement placed many out-of-state entering freshmen at a disadvantage because most did not possess an in-state driver's license when they arrived for school in the fall.

In order to overcome these voting restrictions, organizers conducted extensive efforts to build relationships with local registrars and educate students regarding identification requirements. Through qualitative observation, organizers concluded that these efforts successfully mitigated the impact of restrictive voting laws in New Mexico but not in Arizona.

Subsequent quantitative analysis substantiated these qualitative observations. An analysis of voting turnout on campuses at which the Student PIRGs' New Voters Project operated found that New Mexico youth voted at a rate of 3.8 percent – at levels on par with similar campuses without restrictive voting laws. Youth on campuses we studied in Arizona, on the other hand, voted at rates of 3.5 percent, a loss of more than 800 student voters – significant for such a small sample size.

A second quantitative analysis found additional evidence of the depressive impact of restrictive voting laws on youth turnout. After weighing youth voter turnout against that of older voters, we found that turnout was indeed lower in Arizona and New Mexico than that in comparable states.

In order to ensure the removal of all barriers to young voters on campuses across the country, the report provides several recommendations, including a uniform national set of standards to make voting more accessible to young people.   

Among these recommendations: 

• Citizens should be able to register and vote wherever they currently choose to reside, with no interference from the state;
• Any identification requirements for voter registration or voting should be as broad as possible, should include items that average citizens commonly have in their possession, and should not include items that average citizens do not typically carry with them;
• Citizens should be able to register and vote up to Election Day;
• Citizens should be given an opportunity to register to vote as soon as they become eligible;
• Citizens should be notified in writing, by phone and electronically anytime their registration status is changed; and citizen-sponsored registration drives should be encouraged, not discouraged.

"Only when we see national reform that removes barriers to student voting, will we fully hear young people’s voices in this country," concluded Rosenfeld.

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Launched in 2003, the Student PIRGs' New Voters Project is the largest national non-profit, nonpartisan youth voter mobilization effort. Since 2003, the project registered more than 600,000 young voters and made more than 650,000 personalized Get Out the Vote contacts leading up to Election Day to turn out young voters. www.newvotersproject.org