North Dakota has no voter registration. How does that work?

When he’s not busy showering the White House in gold or recklessly breaking up foreign alliances, President Trump loves to talk about election fraud.

Although the incidence is rare – like a pangolin-in-the-wild sighting – Trump constantly emits a gaseous cloud of false claims. About rigged voting machines, dead people voting, manipulated absentee ballots and other fevered products of his overripe imagination.

Voting is the most basic of democratic exercises, a virtuous act that ranks on the same level as motherhood and apple pie. But Trump treated it like a cudgel, something dark and sinister, fueling a partisan divide that is increasingly undermining confidence in the accuracy and integrity of our elections.

One result is a series of new laws that make voting more difficult.

Since the 2020 presidential election — the most secure in American history, according to the Trump administration’s own watchdogs — at least 30 states have enacted more than 100 restrictive laws, according to New York University’s Brennan Center and UC Berkeley’s Democracy Policy Lab, which are keeping a tally.

Texas passed a law allowing fewer polling places. Mississippi has made it more difficult for people with disabilities to vote by mail. North Carolina has shortened the deadline for returning mail-in ballots.

In California, Sen. Carl DeMaio and his allies are working to label a November ballot measure that would require a government-issued ID to vote a solution in desperate search of a problem.

“We have the lowest level of public confidence in our elections that we’ve ever seen,” the San Diego Republican said in launching the effort, in the tone of someone lamenting the damage caused by a fire while ignoring the arsonist spreading paint thinner everywhere.

Amid all this manufactured hysteria, there is a unique place in America where there is no voter registration requirement.

If you are a U.S. citizen, 18 years of age or older, and have lived in North Dakota for 30 days before Election Day, you are eligible to vote. It has been this way for more than 70 years, since voter registration was abolished in the state in 1951.

How does it work?

Very good, according to those who have observed the system closely.

“It’s working very well,” said Sandy McMerty, North Dakota’s deputy secretary of state.

“In general, I think most people are happy with that,” political scientist Mark Jendrysik agreed, “because it reduces recordkeeping burdens and saves money.”

Jendrysik, who teaches at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, said voter registration was abandoned at a time when the state — now redder than the side of a barn — was experiencing vigorous two-party competition and, with it, a bipartisan spirit of prairie populism.

“There was an idea that we should make it easier to vote,” Jendrysik said. “We should open things up.”

What an idea.

Walk-in voting has not allowed North Dakota to stand out in terms of voting. In the last three elections, turnout has been close to the national average, putting it in the middle of the pack among states.

But there hasn’t been a high rate of fraud either. In 2022, a study by the auditor’s office found that it was “exceptionally” unlikely that a North Dakota election could be fraudulently influenced. (Again, like the country as a whole.)

In fact, Jendrysik said he doesn’t remember a single case of voter fraud being prosecuted in the 26 years he’s lived in North Dakota and followed politics.

It’s not like anyone can show up and vote.

Voting in North Dakota requires a valid form of identification, such as a state-issued driver’s license, tribal ID, or long-term care certificate. It must be presented at each election.

In contrast, a California voter is not required to show identification at a polling place before voting — although they may be asked to do so if they are voting for the first time after registering to vote by mail and their application does not include certain information. This includes a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

Could North Dakota’s no-registration system be replicated elsewhere?

Jendrysik is doubtful, especially in the current political context.

North Dakota is a sparsely populated state with hundreds of small communities where seemingly everyone knows everyone. There are about 470,000 eligible voters, which is a much more manageable number than, say, California’s 30 million adult residents. (California has more than a dozen counties with more than half a million registered voters.)

“It’s unique to this state,” Jendrysik said, “and I think if they hadn’t done it decades ago, it never would have happened.”

(Fun fact: North Dakota also doesn’t have parking meters on its public streets, due to a state law passed in 1948, according to Jendrysik, who has published two academic articles on the subject.)

McMerty, of the secretary of state’s office, believes others could follow North Dakota’s lead.

This would require, she suggested, rigorous data sharing and close coordination between different public agencies. “We update our voter rolls daily – who got a driver’s license, births, deaths. That sort of thing,” McMerty said.

Again, this is a much easier task in a state with a population comparable to North Dakota. (About 800,000 at last count.)

And there is no particular incentive for others to end their voter registration systems – unless it can be proven that it significantly increases turnout.

We should do everything we can to get people to vote and invest in our beleaguered political system. Rather than wasting time chasing shadows and ghosts or indulging in the illusions of a sore loser president.