Voter Turnout

Some rather saddening facts about voter turnout and the elections in 2012 from that report last class:
The nation's most populous states (California, Texas, New York) ranked in the bottom 10 in turnout.
Swing states and Election Day registration states had the highest turnout.
99% of presidential and vice presidential campaign stops were in swing states, and the campaigns targeted 10 states, ignoring the other 40.
About 2.3 million fewer votes were cast than in 2008 (some of the low turnout was contributed to Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York)
Minnesota remains the state with highest turnout in both presidential and midterm elections (must find a report about why it's so high... found this, which contributes it to the civically engaged community outreach and same day registration)
Four non-swing states (California, Alaska, Hawaii, and Oklahoma) saw double-digit percentages of decline in turnout. In California, this means over a million fewer people voted, a loss that amounts to more people than voted in Alaska, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming combined.
A remarkable amount of youth voted, actually deciding the election in some swing states.

Well. gerrymandering has become such as issue that the report actually had to analyze the bias that results from having incumbents redesign their own districts...

There is a serious debate on whether or not all states should have same day registration: while it increases turnout, it slows down the process at the polls, making lines longer while workers fill out and file the paperwork. I have been seeing provisional voting recommended as a replacement, but those votes take longer to count and delay the results of the election. So really it's a question of what we want to delay: the voting or the counting of the votes. Or there could be some kind of compromise.
Just to see some of the details on same-day registration, I am reading this report. It appears that same-day registration costs more for smaller counties than it does larger ones. The process has been working well in the states that currently use it, but the effects of using on a large scale for the presidential election could be really different.