ABSTRACT
In most states, a person needs only to be a United States (US) citizen, have reached voting age, and have lived in the state for a specified time. Since registration is generally a prerequisite to voting, the ease or difficulty of registering to vote certainly affects whether a person actually casts a ballot. The eligibility criteria for registering tare minimal compared with what they were in periods of US history. Age-groups also differ in what time of day they vote. Older persons tend to vote in the morning; younger voters in the late afternoon. Naturally, age is itself related to a number of other factors regularly included in voter turnout models: legal, socioeconomic, social-psychological, economic, and political mobilization. Voter registration and turnout rates would jump dramatically, they asserted, if a wide array of agencies serving the public could register their users. Convicted felons and persons committed to penal institutions are usually ineligible to vote.
