Voter Registration and Election Reform

Voter registration matters.Political candidates, parties, and advocacy groups have always understood this, devoting a great deal of time and resources to ensuring that their supporters are registered. 1 Less nobly, there have been frequent attempts by political operatives to impede participation through the adoption and uneven application of registration rules.Examples include the exclusion of urban immigrants, ethnic minorities, and laborers during the nineteenth century, 2 the mass disfranchisement of southern blacks through most of the twentieth century, 3 and the aggressive purging 4 and caging' practices of recent years.A growing body of social science