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Other eligibility factors
Another factor influencing statistics on voter turnout is the percentage of the country's voting-age population who are ineligible to vote due to non-citizen status or prior felony convictions. In a 2001 article in the American Political Science Review, Michael P. McDonald and Samuel Popkin argued, that at least in the United States, voter turnout since 1972 has not actually declined when calculated for those eligible to vote, what they term the voting-eligible population. In 1972, noncitizens and ineligible felons (depending on state law) constituted about 2% of the voting-age population. By 2004, ineligible voters constituted nearly 10%. Ineligible voters are not evenly distributed across the country, roughly 15% of California's voting-age population is ineligible to vote – which confounds comparisons of states.

Measuring Turnout [edit]
For many years, voter turnout was reported as a percentage of the Voting Age Population (VAP), the Census Bureau's estimate of the number of persons 18 years old and older resident in the United States. The VAP, however, includes people who are not actually eligible to vote, either because they are not US citizens, or because a prior felony conviction bars them from voting under the laws in their state.

In their 2001 article in the American Political Science Review, Michael P. McDonald and Samuel Popkin developed a measure they called the Voting Eligible Population (VEP). The VEP uses "government statistical series to adjust for ineligible but included groups, such as noncitizens and felons, and eligible but excluded groups, such as overseas citizens." They argue, that in the United States, voter turnout since 1972 has not actually declined when calculated as a percentage of the VEP, not the VAP.

The following table shows the available data on turnout for the voting-age population (VAP), and the voting-eligible population (VEP) since 1932.