In a democracy that can only boast that 71 percent of its citizens are registered and able to exercise their civic duty in any given election, access to the franchise is crucial. For decades, millions of citizens have relied on either voter registration drives or government agencies to help them get on the voter rolls. Today, however, private voter registration drives are under attack, while some states are ignoring their responsibilities to reach unregistered citizens. If community-based drives are prevented from helping Americans get registered, and government agencies won't help them, then who will?
In several states, elected officials and partisan groups are intent on stifling the proven effectiveness of voter registration drives run by private individuals and organizations. Despite the partisan-spun "scandals" that come with third-party voter registration drives, they are undeniably effective in reaching large portions of the population.
"According to the 2008 CPS, nearly 9 million citizens [or 8 percent] reported having registered 'at a voter registration drive,'" wrote Doug Hess and Jody Herman in Project Vote report, Representational Bias in the 2008 Electorate. "This likely seriously undercounts the total impact of voter registration drives, however, as 9.4 million citizens (another 8 percent) reported that they registered 'at a school, hospital, or on campus'-all locations where voter registration drives are often conducted by civic organizations and student groups."
Another 9.7 million registered to vote through mail-in voter registration applications, many of whom presumably received these applications from voter drives or organizations that distributed the forms through the postal or electronic mail.
Voter registration drives are protected as a form of free speech under the First Amendment, as well as provisions under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (which directly protects and encourages community-run voter registration drives as the law's primary purpose is to ensure more citizens are registered to vote). Yet lawmakers and election officials in states like Nevada are looking to regulate and criminalize voter registration drives so thoroughly, that they can create a "chilling effect on community-based voter registration, causing many organizations to curtail or cease their voter registration efforts."
Earlier this year, the League of Women Voters and Project Vote teamed up to find that, despite intervention from the Justice Department in 2008, the state Department of Economic Security (DES) was still not doing everything it should to follow the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). In response to our findings, we gathered a coalition of support in hopes of urging the state to continue taking the necessary steps to increase their levels of compliance with a law that has helped many underrepresented, low-income Arizonan communities cast their vote of Election Day.
Next week marks the 90th anniversary of the American woman's right to vote. Since the passage of the 19th amendment, women have generally been more likely to turn out to vote than men. However there is one area of federal election law that some states undermine, which disproportionately disadvantages women, particularly low income citizens and minorities.
Voter registration modernization is a current buzzword in election circles. The idea is that new information tools can make the process cheaper, better, and easier for voters and officials alike. However, at many election forums, this discussion has tended to overlook modernizing the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the so-called "motor-voter" law.
Hopefully, that is about to change. The NVRA, which is the only federal law requiring states to proactively offer voter registration services, relies on a range of state agencies to help people to register. Overall, it has helped tens of millions of Americans. Yet agencies in many states--particularly public assistance offices-have dropped the ball in recent years. That trend is troubling because millions more Americans would likely register if asked by designated NVRA agencies.
The excuses are not new. Some state agencies do not see voter registration as their job, regardless of the federal mandate. Still others see voter registration as a paper-based process generating too much bureaucratic work.
What is new today is that voter registration services need not follow these antiquated models. Today's paperless information technology and large-scale data management-including practices pioneered in several states at their motor vehicle offices and online-show many cost-efficient, bureaucracy-cutting and more accurate ways to offer registration services. These savings are striking and should resonate in today's tough budget times.
These precedents are detailed in a comprehensive new Project Vote report, Voter Registration Modernization and the NVRA, by Steven Rosenfeld. Several state motor vehicle offices are now using software templates, shared databases, data networks and other tools to overcome hurdles associated with implementing the law. Tasks such as training staff, developing registration materials, offering clients opportunities to register, assisting with applications, sending forms to election offices, and tracking results, have all been transformed and simplified.
Modernizing voter registration services has been a big theme in policy and government circles since the 2008 presidential election. But a new effort by the Department of Justice to better implement a 20th century voting rights law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA)-known as the motor voter bill-could make equally big waves, potentially adding millions of voters to official lists.
There is an art in politics to not over-reaching and not over-reacting. But the latest salvo by one of the best-known conservative voting rights activists at his former workplace-the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, which enforces federal voting rights law-crosses a new line: urging states to ignore the DOJ on voting rights.
After 15 years of declining compliance, several states are being brought into line with the National Voter Registration Act, a key federal election law that could help hundreds of thousands of citizens register to vote every year. Though some states are coming around due to lawsuits filed by voting rights organizations, others are voluntarily beginning to adhere to the NVRA. This week Project Vote released two new publications that explain what states are doing wrong and offer best practices for improvement.
Resolving a three-year old lawsuit filed against the state of Ohio that charged widespread violations of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), parties in the case have submitted a settlement agreement to the court that should ensure voter registration opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Ohio public assistance clients. Evidence presented in the case had shown that many of Ohio's county public assistance offices were ignoring their responsibilities to provide voter registration to their low-income clients, as required by the NVRA.
After the 2008 election, voter registration has become a focal point for legislators and advocates from all ends of the spectrum. Whichever way it is sliced, the number of registered eligible voters has still declined since 2004. As multiple problems have been cited as the cause for lowered registration rates (including mobility issues, unequal access to registration opportunities, voter caging, and even so-called apathy), voting rights advocates as well as legislators have been vocal about their solutions.
A New York Times story this week reported that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is planning to return the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to its historical mission: protecting the civil rights of Americans. According to the article, the new attorney general is committed to "a revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies...where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly," including housing, employment, lending practices, and voting rights.
Signed into law by President Clinton in May of 1993, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) was hailed by some as "the final achievement of the 1960's voting rights revolution," and proponents estimated that it would add 50 million Americans to the voting rolls. However, in a comprehensive new report released today by Project Vote, The NVRA at Fifteen: A Report to Congress, voting rights attorney Estelle Rogers finds that lack of enforcement, failures of state and federal leadership, and restrictive court decisions have left the full potential of the NVRA unrealized, and have left millions of disenfranchised Americans still awaiting the promise of a truly inclusive democracy.
Enfranchising America's least represented citizens is as simple as following the law: that's the message Project Vote and a coalition of voting rights groups sent today as they filed lawsuits against Indiana and New Mexico for failing to comply with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
In a major victory for voting rights, low-income voters in the state of Missouri will finally have better access to voter registration opportunities, thanks to a lawsuit settlement announced today by Project Vote, Demos, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Although the 2008 presidential election showcased a more diverse electorate with an increase in voter registration and turnout by historically underrepresented Americans - including youth and minorities - the movement toward a more balanced electorate that represents all citizens is still a work in progress. Advocates have long maintained-and recently Congress has heard testimony to the fact-that disparities in turnout rates are less an issue of voter apathy, and more related to a severe lack of democratic access for many groups. The growing awareness of this problem has inspired an increased interest among citizens, advocates, legislators, and officials to improve the administration of elections, particularly regarding voter registration.
In 2000, Florida's disastrous effort to purge former felons from voter rolls resulted in the disenfranchisement of hundreds if not thousands of legitimate voters and clearly influenced the outcome of the presidential contest in that state. History may repeat itself this November with states taking potentially reckless and unlawful measures to clean voter rolls before Election Day.
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