Last week, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) conceded to Democratic challenger Roy Cooper, who had held a small but growing lead over McCrory since Election Day. That lead stands at less than half the number of votes that were tossed out because the voter was unregistered. It’s unlikely that these discarded votes would have changed the election’s outcome — they were disproportionately cast by African Americans and Democrats and would likely have furthered Cooper’s lead. But given the sheer volume of disenfranchised voters, it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which they could flip an election result. In North Carolina and the 37 other states that don’t allow voters to register on Election Day, hundreds of thousands of people saw their votes tossed out because of their registration status. (In 2012, there were a quarter of a million rejected ballots nationwide.)
And that’s not including the unregistered Americans who didn’t even try to vote in the election, but who may have gone to the polls if an Election-Day registration option existed. Numerous academic studies found that implementing Election-Day registration can increase voter turnout by 5 to 10 percent.
These ballots are discarded after going through provisional ballot systems, which are implemented in most states. When people show up to the polls and their voter eligibility is questioned — most often because they’re not on registration rolls or, in some states, because they don’t have an acceptable photo ID — they’re given a provisional ballot. In the days and weeks following the election, state and local officials, sometimes alongside campaigns’ lawyers, decide whether each ballot should be counted.
Full Article: Registration deadlines left thousands of votes uncounted this year – Washington Post.