Year of Publication

2021

College

Martin School of Public Policy and Administration

Degree Name

Master of Public Administration

Committee Chair

Dr. Iuliia Shybalkina

Executive Summary

Automatic Voter Registration is a recently introduced policy that simplifies the process of registering to vote in order to increase voter turnout rates. This capstone estimates how successful this policy has been. To that end, I used a difference-in-differences research design to consider voter registration and turnout rates seen in the Congressional general elections over the period from 2010 to 2018 in Oregon and Washington. I found that the implementation of Automatic Voter Registration led to a small but statistically significant increase in voter registration and voter turnout rates in Oregon relative to both the prior trend seen in that state and to Washington, a counterfactual state without Automatic Voter Registration during these elections. However, due to the limited nature of this study focused on five elections in one corner of the United States, a more comprehensive study is needed to confirm that this increase is replicable in other areas.

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