Abstract
The terms are not as Cloward and Piven have stated them, between one theory that holds that fewer and fewer people are registered to vote and another that holds that registered voters are going to the polls less and less, but rather whether registration barriers or lack of motivation is the primary cause of nonparticipation. It is also about the public policy implications of that debate—whether one engages in a unitary attack on registration barriers or a multi-faceted approach to nonparticipation, which includes but is not limited to barrier removal.In the inexact world of voting statistics nothing will be fully solved without a full-validation study of Census-reported registration and voting figures, and state aggregate data on registration.There are three issues involved: whether the state official registration rolls are inflated; to what degree; and whether they are progressively inflated. On the first there is broad agreement, which includes myself and the disclaimer I issue in each of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate's reports on registration and turnout.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: