Expanding Democracy: Voter Registration Around the World

The United States is one of few democratic nations that place on individuals the entire burden of registering to vote on individual citizens. Today, one-quarter to one-third of all eligible Americans remain unregistered — and thus are unable to cast ballots that will count. Even Americans who are registered risk being blocked from casting a ballot because of problems with our voter registration system — unprocessed registrations, inaccurate purges of names from the voter rolls, and other administrative and human errors. The registration system is as much a problem for the dedicated civil servants who administer our elections as it is for voters. It is costly, inefficient, and insufficiently accurate.

Now, after a decade of controversy over election and voting problems, the United States is again considering poised to reforms to voter registration.