February 2009

The United States is one of the few industrialized democracies that place the onus of registration on the voter. In other democracies, the government facilitates voting by taking upon itself the responsibility to build voter rolls of all eligible citizens. Even in the United States, voter-initiated registration did not exist until the late nineteenth century. It was instituted then in many states with the intention of suppressing unpopular voters, especially former slaves and new European immigrants, and it continues to disenfranchise many Americans to this day.