Election-day registration and turnout inequality

Many researchers blame voter registration requirements for inequalities in turnout rates across various groups in U.S. society. The number of states,v ith election-day registration (EDR) of voters doubled between the 1990 and 1994 elections, providing a unique opportunity to examine its impact on tur nout inequality across demographic groups. The adoption of EDR is found to be associated with large and significant improvements in the turnout rates of young persons relative to older persons, and of recent movers relative t o nonmovers. Turnout inequality by income class also declines with EDR adop tion, but not by a significant amount in multivariate tests. The adoption o f EDR does not improve equality of representation across educational levels .