Participating in democracy should be a simple exercise for anyone who is a citizen over the age of 18, but as voter registration and turnout stats indicate, it’s not always that easy. On their way to the polls, too many people encounter barriers and obstacles, and too often these impediments are a result of varying, nuanced election administration procedures across the United States. As a new Project Vote report illustrates, examples of many of these election administration dos and don’ts can be found in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Calling voter registration "the lifeblood of our republic," Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, opened the committee's hearing this morning on current problems in America's voter registration system. A focus of the discussion was a new study produced by the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey-conducted by researchers at thirty universities across the country-that finds that up to three million voters actively tried to vote in 2008 but were denied, and an additional four million were discouraged from voting due to administrative barriers.
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