NYT:

First the Covid-19 pandemic upended how people vote, forcing a huge shift to mailed-in ballots in primary elections nationwide. Now it is taking aim at who can vote — the millions of people who would ordinarily register or update their registrations in a presidential election year.

New voter registrations in 12 states and the District of Columbia plummeted 70 percent in April compared to January, before the coronavirus became a major public issue, according to a study released Friday by the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.

By comparison, the center reported, new registrations in the 13 surveyed jurisdictions rose by 43 percent during the same period in 2016.

In Florida, one likely battleground state in November, there were 77,000 new registrations in January; that number fell to 21,000 in April. Another battleground state, North Carolina, plunged from 112,000 new voters in January to just 35,000 in April. Monthly registrations fell by two-thirds in Arizona and by three-quarters in California.