Knowledge about Voter Laws Still Lacking
Over 40% of young Americans “don’t know” key information about voting process
On Monday, CIRCLE released a groundbreaking poll of young people’s views of the election. The survey, commissioned by the Youth Education Fund, is unique in that it polled 1,695 youth (ages 18-29) in June/July and 1,109 of the same youth between October 12 and 23. Surveying the same people twice provides powerful evidence of change over time.
State of Young American’s Voter Law Knowledge
State voting and registration laws can have an influence on youth electoral participation, as previous researchindicates. Many states have changed their voting laws since 2010. Although the impact of those laws is unknown as yet, one pressing question is whether young people know what laws apply in their states. In our October national poll of young adults, we asked respondents about photo identification requirements, early voting opportunities, and voter registration deadlines. More than forty percent answered they were “unsure” to each question about these laws. For instance, 41.7% said they didn’t know what the photo ID requirements were in their state. This was down slightly from the 44.2% who weren’t sure when polled in the summer. While 43.3% didn’t know what the early voting options were in their states, this was a definite change from the 51.6% who were unsure in the summer. In the summer, 61.0% of respondents were unsure whether they needed to register 30 days or more before the election. In this poll, only 40.4% didn’t know. Across the board, likely voters were more than twice as likely to choose an answer to each of the voter law questions than unlikely voters. They were also more likely to be correct.
Of those who thought they knew the answer to voter law questions, respondents were most likely to know early voting requirements in their state (84.1% correct) and least likely to know whether the registration deadline was 30 days or more from the election (22.5% correct). A little over half (53.5%) were able to correctly identify the photo ID requirements for voting in their state. When young people chose an incorrect response in October, it was more