Is Your Voter Registration Complete?

Unless you live in Wyoming or North Dakota, you should be able to confirm your current voter registration status via an online voter portal maintained by your state’s election authority. By entering the necessary personal information in your state’s online voter portal, you will be able to confirm your registration and listing on the voter rolls – or alternatively, if the system does not recognize your information, that you are not listed on the voter rolls as a registered voter. Wyoming does have a voter registration requirement but no online voter portal where you can check your status, whereas North Dakota does not have any voter registration requirement at all…although the state’s voter ID law is more restrictive than any other state’s ID options.

In many states, if there are deficiencies in your application for voter registration, an election authority at the state or local level may proactively seek to contact you by mail or possibly email or phone. Officials in the District of Columbia, Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia will not send any notice to you. Election authorities in other states may seek missing information by using the contact information you have provided to the state, but such outreach is not required. Washington is the only state where most counties will provide, through your online voter portal, if and what identification information is missing, incomplete or unverified.

Most election authorities that do proactively reach out to voters will inform you of the nature of your registration deficiency, including that you have failed to furnish required ID information such as a driver’s license or state ID number or the last 4 digits of your social security number. However, in New Mexico you will be notified only that your registration application is incomplete (without details). In Maine and Missouri, the lack of your driver’s license or state ID number or the last 4 digits of your social security number may not trigger a notice, since evidence of that information can otherwise be furnished at the time of voting in any case.

Click here for NCSL’s map of states that allow you to register to vote and cast a ballot during the same day so that any deficiency in voter registration can be cured by providing the necessary information and identification at the polls whether on Election Day (or, in North Carolina, during the early voting period).

##

VoteRiders is deeply grateful to the several dozen pro bono lawyers at the law firms of Crowell Morning, DLA Piper, Goodwin Procter, Morgan Lewis & Brockius, and White & Case, whose research formed the basis for the above guidance and conclusions.