United, Yes. Uniform? Not Even Close.

[akirlu]

Part of the reason that voter registration deadlines were on my mind in the previous post is that moving from California to Washington can be a bit of a gotcha, voter registration wise, if you aren't prompt about getting your paperwork done.

California's voter registration deadline is 15 days before the election. In Washington, the deadline is 30 days (unless you deliver your registration materials by hand to the local voter registration office, in which case it's 15). I've gotten caught by that at least once.

My sense was that Washington wasn't that rare, so I went poking around this site to see if I was right. Yep. Well over half the states have registration deadlines 25-30 days out from a given election. Or possibly more, depending on when a special election is called in Georgia. Then they range all the way down to places like Connecticut, which requires you to register one day before the election, to places like Minnesota, and New Hampshire, where you can register at the polls, on the day.

What's impressive, too, is abstruse wording of some of the deadlines. Iowa, Georgia, and Nebraska win the prize for what seems to me like pointless complication. As far as I can tell, for any Tuesday election, the (for example) 5th Monday before is always going to be 29 days before the election, so why not say that? But the one that really got my jaw hanging was North Dakota: North Dakota does not have voter registration. They have ballots and polling places, and it appears that they vote, so I have no idea how that works. I guess you just show up.

So while we are the United States of America, there sure isn't a lot of uniformity of election process among or across them.

Comments

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

While Minnesota allows you to register at the polls, on the day, I'll point out that the prospective voter has to have resided in the state for 20 days before the election.

It still makes more sense than the arbitrary restrictions that other states enforce.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Residency requirements don't seem too crazy to me, especially in border towns, but yes, I think Minnesota's registration policy seems much more sensible to me. Unpunctuality about getting around to filling out the bureaucratic forms doesn't seem like a sufficient reason to deny anyone a chance to participate in an election, though I do wonder if on-the-day registration tends to slow down the voting process in big elections enough to affect other people's ability to vote.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Separate lines.

It does increase the staffing requirements at the polling places.

[n6tqs.livejournal.com]

Or even within states, for some things, apparently.

Do any states use posting date rather than delivery date for mail-in ballots?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Ah, separate lines are good.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Washington uses the post mark date rather than the delivery date for mail-in ballots, and all but two counties in Washington are mail-only balloting, which is part of why it takes so consarned long to count all the valid votes in Washington. There may be other states that do this, but I can vouch for Washington.

And you're right, of course, that there isn't any guarantee of uniformity even within states -- on ballot design and voting machinery, for instance. That can go county-by-county.

Wisconsin info

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Advance registration has to happen a certain number of days before the election, but Wisconsin also allows same-day registration. That includes changes of address, too.

At the polling place where I worked, we had 300 people register (or re-register) on Tuesday. In the September (non-presidential) primary, that ward had 309 people VOTE.

Separate lines?

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

The separate lines are getting pushed back from the election headquarters, although almost everybody was using it to move people through.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It can be, oddly, precinct by precinct, if the county registrar has approved more than one, or during transistions from one machine to another.