Race and Registration Roadblocks

Abstract

We consider equity in pathways to democratic participation in the United States by examining the effects of voter registration laws on registration rates of Blacks, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic Whites, with a special focus on the youth in each demographic group. We do so by updating and refining the Difficulty of Registration Index (Jansa, Motta, and Herrick, 2022) to measure registration hurdles across states and over time. Although we hypothesize that difficult registration laws will disproportionately and adversely affect Blacks and Hispanics, our results are more nuanced. We find that registration difficulty depresses registration across all three racial groups, but we do not find evidence of racial disparities. Among youth, though, Hispanic citizens are disproportionately less likely to register as difficulty increases, while the analogous effect of difficulty on Black youth registration is not statistically distinguishable from zero. We explore the implications and nuances of these findings, highlighting the complex interplay between registration laws and demographics.