Voting Rights

Election Day Registration is a more than 40-year old reform that ensures all eligible voters can cast a ballot that is counted. To understand how voters use this reform, we surveyed states with EDR. The 21 states with EDR report that it is a low-cost, simple reform that is overwhelmingly used by voters to update their registration rather than to register for the first time.

Kristina Mensik, assistant director of nonprofit election advocacy group Common Cause Massachusetts, said with the current voting age at 18, many citizens gain their suffrage just as they are moving out of their home. . .

Massachusetts’ 20-day registration deadline is an unnecessary barrier to political participation. It exacerbates inequality and suppresses the kind of participatory and representative democracy that we have long talked about in the Commonwealth, but that has never actualized. Now, it is time we remove this dated deadline.