Abstract
Electoral reforms have been cast into the forefront of political discussions as states con-template how best to provide access to voting while limiting the spread of CoVid-19. Adding fuel to the fire, these laws being heavily challenged on the grounds of creating partisan ad-vantages or inducing fraud. While a wealth of scholarship has investigated whether enactment of certain electoral reforms advantage one party’s supporters over another, less attention has been paid to how the administration of these reforms affect party supporters, and particularly to whether these administrative decisions may be intentional. Further, what electoral administration-focused research does exist mostly concentrates on state/county wide votes, racial and ethnic groups, or socioeconomic classes. To contribute to the literature and ongoing dialogue over electoral reforms, this study investigates 1) whether areas with more young people get more or less voting sites for early voting and same-day registration, and 2) if so, if there a partisan effort behind any differences. Young people often lack political resources and experience while tending to vote Democrat, suggesting they might be influenced by electoral reforms (particularly same-day registration) and their administration while also a potential tar-get of partisan electoral engineering. Using a series of different model specifications and data covering presidential and midterm elections from 2012-2018, results indicate that counties with higher percentages of young people receive less voting sites for early voting, and this is especially true in states with same-day registration. Further analyses suggests elected and appointed official partisanship plays a role. Though both parties provide less sites to young voters, Republicans consistently provide less than Democrats.