Despite much attention to election reform efforts, voter registration, and get out the vote efforts during the hotly contested presidential election of 2004, only slightly more than half of eligible voters went to the polls. As we enter another crucial election season, TCF Democracy Fellow Tova Andrea Wang examines the reasons for perennially low turn-out numbers and presents a set of common-sense proposals to boost participation.

View the news release here.

Proposals reviewed in the brief include:

• Voters should be allowed to register up until and on Election Day.
• Election Day should be a national holiday.
• As long as a voter appears at any precinct within the county in which the voter resides, the provisional ballot cast by the voter should be counted for all countywide, statewide and presidential races.
• States should not have restrictive voter identification requirements.
• Social service agencies and departments of motor vehicles must comply with the National Voter Registration Act and provide citizens with an effective opportunity to register to vote.
• Take the partisan politics out of redistricting.
• Extend free media time to candidates.
• Parties and candidates should do more to personally engage voters.

Click here for a complete list of the Security and Opportunity Agenda reports available online.

The Security and Opportunity Agenda is an initiative that consists of a series of short, engaging publications putting forward policy ideas for addressing the most serious challenges facing the United States. Each brief provides an overview of the nature of the problem to be confronted, a summary of public opinion data about the issue, an explanation of the proposed solutions and evidence that they will work, and an estimate of the costs involved. The series is intended to offer journalists, congressional staffers, and others concerned with current policy debates a concise guide to the problem and a clearly stated idea for a solution.