At yesterday’s meeting, the Virginia State Board of Elections approved changes to the state’s voter registration form. One major change is a redesign that should help more eligible voters submit complete, valid forms, and get on the rolls.
The design of a voter registration form matters. If the form isn’t designed in a way that is easy to understand and as intuitive as possible to the people filling it out, it means administrative errors can—and do—get in the way of eligible people getting registered to vote. It’s especially true when design flaws cause applicants to leave out required information.
One longstanding problem with the Virginia voter registration form is that for years it has contained a required field – the voter’s previous registration information – below the place where the applicant has to sign the application. Understandably, many voters fill in all the information above the signature line, and sign the application, but fail to realize that there is a required piece of information further down. This wouldn’t be a problem if the previous registration information was optional. (It’s also not a problem online, where the site can tell you if you miss something.) But by putting a required section below the form’s signature line, many people missed it, and the result was that they didn’t get to register.
“The design of a voter registration form matters…administrative errors can—and do—get in the way of eligible people getting registered to vote.”
In fact, in our previous work reviewing several hundred rejected voter registration applications in Virginia, Project Vote found that a large percentage of rejections reviewed—over one-third—resulted solely from applicants’ failure to check a box that they weren’t previously registered to vote. It was disheartening to see that mistake on rejected form after rejected form, so it’s great to see this change coming in. (Incidentally, understanding these kinds of key facts is only possible where the election official follows federal law and makes records available to the public.)
Because so many applicants get rejected for leaving out this box, Project Vote has advocated for moving the signature line below all of the information the applicant has to fill out. So, it is great to see this change finally happening, because it has a real impact on whether people who fill out and submit forms actually get registered to vote.
It may seem like a small detail, but we expect that moving the signature line below the previous registration information field will result in a lot more complete applications. This way, once the applicant signs the form, they’re done. The result should be fewer eligible applicants rejected for administrative rather than substantive reasons. That’s the way it should be, and it’s nice to see Virginia moving in that direction.
Photo: Aaron Webb via Creative Commons license.
