Registration: entering an eligible person on the voter roll

Registration is the official process by which an eligible person is entered on the voter roll of a jurisdiction. In the United States it is run by state and local election authorities under state and federal law. Creating an account on My Vote Forward’s demo is not registration, and the site registers no one.

Definition

Voter registration produces an official list, sometimes called the roll or roster, of people entitled to vote. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission defines a roster as “an official register of electors entitled to vote at an election, used to verify and check in voters prior to issuing them a ballot”.⁠¹ Registration is the process that puts a person on that list and keeps the list current.

Registration is distinct from eligibility. Eligibility is the legal status; registration is the procedure that records it. USA.gov lists being “registered to vote by your state’s voter registration deadline” as a requirement in most places but notes that “North Dakota does not require voter registration”.⁠²

Origin and history

Two federal laws set the modern framework. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 found that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote is a fundamental right” and that “discriminatory and unfair registration laws and procedures can have a direct and damaging effect” on participation.⁠³ Its stated purposes include to “increase the number of eligible citizens who register to vote,” “to protect the integrity of the electoral process,” and “to ensure that accurate and current voter registration rolls are maintained”.⁠³ Those purposes are often cited by opposing sides of registration debates, which is part of why the statute names all of them.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 required each state to implement “a single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list,” to “perform list maintenance” on a regular basis, and generally to collect a driver’s license number or “the last 4 digits of the applicant’s social security number” on applications for federal elections.⁠⁴ The longer history of registration as a tool of both inclusion and exclusion is in Access and exclusion.

How registration is measured and used

Registration rates are usually measured with the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. For the 2024 election, the Census Bureau reported that “73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote” and that 65.3% voted.⁠⁵ These figures come from survey responses and may differ from administrative records.

States have changed how people get on the roll. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) describes automatic voter registration as a process in which “eligible individuals are automatically registered to vote when interacting with certain government agencies,” usually a motor vehicle office, with the option to opt out; NCSL counts 24 states plus the District of Columbia as having enacted or implemented it, and lists Oregon as enacting it in 2015.⁠⁶ Supporters argue it makes rolls more complete and accurate; critics raise concerns about errors in agency data and about people registered without a deliberate choice.

Common confusions and neighboring terms

• Registration vs. eligibility. A registered person may later become ineligible (for example, by moving), and an eligible person may be unregistered.
• Registration vs. identity proofing. Registration uses identity information but is governed by election law, not by digital identity standards.
• Registration vs. account creation. A website account proves nothing about eligibility and puts no one on a roll.
• Registration vs. participation. Being registered is a precondition for voting in most states; it is not itself voting.

How My Vote Forward uses the term

My Vote Forward uses “registration” only for the official process. The framework states in Identity and registration that registration is run by election authorities, not by the framework or its websites, and that a demo account is not registration. The site’s About page states that these websites “do not register voters, issue ballots, or run elections.”

Unresolved questions

• If a civic participation system were ever connected to official processes, should it rely on the voter roll, and what would that mean for unregistered residents?
• How can list maintenance remove outdated records without wrongly removing eligible voters?
• Should survey-based registration rates or administrative counts be the headline measure, given that each has known errors?