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Off-year record shattered on National Voter Registration Day

National Voter Registration Day logo

Those who participated were a combination of new voters and people who needed to update their registration information.

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Tristiaña Hinton
By Tristiaña HintonOct 04, 2019
Tristiaña Hinton

Audience Development Editor

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The 2020 primaries are just around the corner, and thanks to this year's National Voter Registration Day, an additional 400,000 people are ready to cast their ballots.

The estimated number of registrations is nearly three times that of previous non-election-year events. And while some of these new or renewed registrants can now participate in local and state elections this fall, many are gearing up for important primary races happening as early as February of next year.

Over 4,000 community partners held events where people could sign up in time for their next election, whether it's this fall or next year. The League of Women Voters alone held over 500 voter registration drives.

Celebrities across the country promoted the unofficial holiday, from Ellen and Quincy Jones to Michelle Obama and Newt Gingrich. #NationalVoterRegistrationDay was also the top trending topic on Twitter on Sept. 24.

For anyone who missed National Voter Registration Day and has a local or state election in 2019, Oct. 4 is the deadline in at least 13 states. Voters can register online here.

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A better direction for democracy reform

Denver election judge Eric Cobb carefully looks over ballots as counting continued on Nov. 6. Voters in Colorado rejected a ranked choice voting and open primaries measure.

Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

A better direction for democracy reform

Drutman is a senior fellow at New America and author "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America."

This is the conclusion of a two-part, post-election series addressing the questions of what happened, why, what does it mean and what did we learn? Read part one.

I think there is a better direction for reform than the ranked choice voting and open primary proposals that were defeated on Election Day: combining fusion voting for single-winner elections with party-list proportional representation for multi-winner elections. This straightforward solution addresses the core problems voters care about: lack of choices, gerrymandering, lack of competition, etc., with a single transformative sweep.

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To-party doom loop
Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America

Let’s make sense of the election results

Drutman is a senior fellow at New America and author of "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America."

Well, here are some of my takeaways from Election Day, and some other thoughts.

1. The two-party doom loop keeps getting doomier and loopier.

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Person voting in Denver

A proposal to institute ranked choice voting in Colorado was rejected by voters.

RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Despite setbacks, ranked choice voting will continue to grow

Mantell is director of communications for FairVote.

More than 3 million people across the nation voted for better elections through ranked choice voting on Election Day, as of current returns. Ranked choice voting is poised to win majority support in all five cities where it was on the ballot, most notably with an overwhelming win in Washington, D.C. – 73 percent to 27 percent.

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Electoral College map

It's possible Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could each get 269 electoral votes this year.

Chessrat, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Electoral College rules are a problem. A worst-case tie may be ahead.

Johnson is the executive director of the Election Reformers Network, a national nonpartisan organization advancing common-sense reforms to protect elections from polarization. Keyssar is a Matthew W. Stirling Jr. professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His work focuses on voting rights, electoral and political institutions, and the evolution of democracies.

It’s the worst-case presidential election scenario — a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. In our hyper-competitive political era, such a scenario, though still unlikely, is becoming increasingly plausible, and we need to grapple with its implications.

Recent swing-state polling suggests a slight advantage for Kamala Harris in the Rust Belt, while Donald Trump leads in the Sun Belt. If the final results mirror these trends, Harris wins with 270 electoral votes. But should Trump take the single elector from Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district — won by Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016 — then both candidates would be deadlocked at 269.

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