Voter Participation And Registration: Making Voting Easier
Posted by Forbes on February 3, 2026
How can we make voting easier for young people? Travis Catt, Professor at Eastern Arizona College and ALL IN Awards Standout Faculty Member winner, believes that the answer to increasing youth voter turnout is through allowing more opportunities to vote.
The United States is ranked 31st in the world in the percentage of eligible voters who participate in national elections. Many reasons are listed by experts and in the media for why this is: too few voting centers, voter suppression, strict voter ID laws, political campaigns that target certain groups and populations to either encourage them to vote or discourage them to vote, etc. However, if you ask most Americans, they would state that the fundamental right to vote is crucial for a well-functioning, healthy democracy.
From the context of being a social work professor on a college campus, I work with many traditional on-campus students who come to our small community in Graham County, Arizona from all over the United States. Many of these students would like to participate in voting in the county directly, but are often limited by having failed to register to vote in Arizona in a sufficient time frame, due to Arizona not permitting same-day voter registration. Arizona is not alone in this, as currently only 23 states and Washington D.C. allow for same-day voter registration.
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