Rosa Kalish
In their report, The Case for Automatic Voter Registration, the Brennan Center for Justice details a voting reform proposal, that among other things, would create a digitized system of voter registration to automatically register eligible citizens to vote when they give their information to other government agencies (like the DMV). This past year, Oregon implemented such a system, and through the program registered more than 225,000 voters before the presidential election in November (Chokshi, 2016). Other states have followed suit, and much news coverage of Oregon's system has called the program a success (Berman, 2016, Chokshi, 2016, Hansen, 2016). However, because the program is so new, very little academic literature discusses the outcomes of Oregon’s changes.
For my final project for Math 241 I plan to explore the effects of Oregon's automatic voter registration system on voter turnout and the demographics of Oregon voters. Because there is almost no academic work on Oregon's recent changes, I plan to use news sources as well as academic literature on related automatic registration systems (Contreras et. al., 2015, Hanmer, 2009, Franklin & Drier, 1997).
In evaluating Oregon’s automatic voter registration I also plan to supplement existing literature on automatic voter registration with my own analysis of Oregon voter registration data. Using Oregon voter registration files, which include data on voters registered through the automatic registration program, as well as other voters, I plan to analyze voting turnout rates. To explore if automatic voting affects the demographic makeup of the Oregon registered electorate I also plan to look at class, age, race, and gender using the voter files and additional census tract information.
Week 1 (April 3- 9): Import and tidy Oregon voter files.
Week 2 (April 10-17): Import geographical data and being modeling.
Week 3 (April 17- 23): Complete modeling and create graphics.
Week 4 (April 24-30): Collect literature on voter registration.
Week 5 (May 1-7): Polish code and graphics, begin writing.
Week 6 (May 8-10): Finish writing.
Automatic Voter Registration. Brennan Center for Justice, New York University. 2017.
Berman, Ari. "Automatic Voter Registration in Oregon Is Revolutionizing American Democracy." The Nation, May 16, 2016. Accessed April 3, 2017.
Chokshi, Niraj. "Automatic Voter Registration a ‘Success’ in Oregon." The New York Times, December 2, 2016. Accessed April 3, 2017.
Contreras, Gonzalo, Alfredo Joignant, and Mauricio Morales. "The return of censitary suffrage? The effects of automatic voter registration and voluntary voting in Chile." Democratization 23, no. 3 (March 4, 2015): 520-44.
Franklin, Daniel, and Eric Grier. "Effects of Motor Voter Legislation." American Politics Research, January 1, 1997. Accessed April 3, 2017.
Hanmer, Michael J. Discount Voting: Voter Registration Reforms and their Effects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Hansen, Kristena. "Oregon automatic voter registration a success, with a hitch." The Seattle Times, May 13, 2016. Accessed April 3, 2017.
This repo is organized following the guidelines outlined here, adapted for use in this class from work by Project TIER and Thomas Leeper
— Jay Lee, Reed College