The Slower Increase In Voter Registration

Capitol Currents:

My editor saw a story in the Seattle Times earlier this week about how Washington state has not experienced a very large uptick in voter registrations this year. Yes, there's been an increase, but not to the extent that you might expect in a presidential election year, and not anywhere near the increase experienced in the run-up to the 2008 election. The paper had looked at Washington voter registrations in January of 2008 and September of 2008, and compared that increase to the increase in registrations from January of 2012 to September of 2012. The Times' analysis showed that about one-third fewer new voters had signed up this year compared to four years ago.We decided to crunch the numbers to see if Oregon has had the same experience. As I reported on the radio, the short answer is "yes." But in a one-minute radio spot, I didn't have the luxury to really delve into the numbers, so here's a bit more of what I found:First, thanks to redistricting, the Oregon Secretary of State's office didn't have voter registration figures available from January of this year, so it wasn't possible to do a strictly apples-to-apples parallel analysis with the Seattle Times story. So I used February of 2008 and February of 2012 as my baseline numbers for each year, which I think is close enough to draw a fair comparison. And I calculated the increase to September of both years. In Oregon, voter registration increased by 6.9% over that time period in 2008, and by 5.8% in 2012. Or, to put it another way, new registrations are increasing at a 16% slower pace this time around.  So clearly Oregon, like Washington, is seeing fewer new voters signing up this year. But the drop-off is smaller in Oregon than in Washington.

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