Abstract
This paper studies the effect of the introduction of preregistration laws, which allow young citizens to register before being eligible to vote, on voter turnout and public spending in the United States. Since preregistration laws have been introduced in different states in different years, these events have generated exogenous variation across space and time in the exposure of young voters to the new Electoral reforms. Estimates exploiting a difference-in-difference regression design indicate that preregistration laws promote a sizeable de facto enfranchisement effect for young voters, especially for those from poorer families. Consistently with a political economic model, estimates also establish that preregistration leads to an increase in state-level government spending for higher education, to the benefit of newly-enfranchised young voters. The effect is stronger in the presence of Income inequality and of political competition combined with a larger share of young voters. Results obtained from a sample of higher education institutions exploiting a county-pairs regression design also show a positive effect of preregistration on state grants and recipients of state-provided student financial aid. In line with theoretical predictions our findings suggest large political responsiveness of education spending to shifts in voter turnout for the young population.
