Yesterday, voting rights groups filed suit against the Secretary of the Commonwealth and the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance for violating their federally mandated responsibilities to offer tens of thousands of public assistance clients the opportunity to register to vote.
Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1995 to boost democratic participation by ensuring that all eligible citizens have ample opportunities to register to vote. Section 7 of the law requires state agencies provide public assistance—including agencies that administer food stamps, Medicaid, TANF, and WIC— to assist their clients in registering to vote.
In Massachusetts, voter registration applications submitted through public assistance offices had declined by as much as 92.5 percent between 1999-2000 and 2009-2010. According to the suit, the decline in voter registration at public assistance offices has contributed to a significant voter registration gap between low-income and affluent citizens in the Commonwealth; in the last presidential election year, this gap was 28 percent.
The civil rights movement lost a hero yesterday: Nicholas Katzenbach, whom I was privileged to know for over 20 years. Even his name said a lot: Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach. A son of privilege. Exeter and Princeton, a distinguished stint in World War II, then back to Yale Law School and a Rhodes at Oxford. He could have done anything—and indeed, he did a lot of things, including many years as General Counsel of IBM.
But we should remember him as the man who accompanied James Meredith when he enrolled in Ole Miss, who faced down George Wallace at the University Alabama door, who put the power of the Justice Department behind the fight for racial equality, and who co-authored the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was a very large man. (The Katzenbach-Wallace confrontation must have been particularly gratifying for the federal marshals to watch.) He was an even larger presence.
Florida’s list-matching procedure that compares the voter rolls with the motor vehicle’s records to vet out “potential non-citizens” may hurt the democratic process more than it helps.
According to the Miami Herald blog, Naked Politics, approximately 2,700 out of 12 million registered voters have been flagged and contacted about proving that they are citizens, including Maria Ginorio, who became a citizen in 2009. Ginorio, an absentee voter who is “ill and homebound,” was put off by the request for citizenship documents and said she would likely forgo voting altogether.
Voting rights advocates won an important legal victory that will ensure that Louisiana’s public assistance agency clients—the state’s poorest and most marginalized residents—will be offered an opportunity to register to vote.
In a forceful decision, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP that Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) requires that all public assistance clients must be provided with a voter registration application, whether they seek benefits in person or by the Internet, telephone and mail. Louisiana argued that its public assistance agencies were only required to offer voter registration to those clients who appeared in person.
“The court’s ruling will ensure that low-income individuals will not be denied voter registration services because of advancing technology,” said Sarah Brannon, director of the Public Agency Voter Registration Program at Project Vote. “The court recognized that the mandates of the NVRA are not limited to in-person visits to public assistance offices.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP and an individual client of the state’s public assistance agencies. The Plaintiffs are represented by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., Project Vote, and New Orleans Attorney Ron Wilson. Read more.
Attorneys from Demos, Project Vote, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law sent a pre-litigation notice letter on Monday to the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth charging that the state is failing to provide low-income residents with a legally-mandated opportunity to register to vote. The groups demand that the secretary immediately act to bring Pennsylvania into compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) or face litigation.
The letter, sent on behalf of the Black Political Empowerment Project, was also forwarded to Pennsylvania’s Department of Public Welfare and Department of Health officials.
According to U.S. Election Assistance Commission data, the number of voter registration applications submitted at Pennsylvania public assistance offices decreased by 93% in recent years, from 59,462 in 1995-1996 to just 4,179 in 2009-2010. This drop in voter registrations is particularly significant given that the number of initial food stamp applications in Pennsylvania during the same time frame nearly doubled.
The “pre-emptive” repeal of HB 194—a law that severely limits early voting in Ohio—has the support of the House, according to House Speaker Bill Batchelder. But, Batchelder also said that the House likely will not act on other election law changes before November, a promising turn of events for voters and advocates.
“It is great news that the legislature has finally heard the voices of more than 300,000 Ohio voters who signed a petition to put a stop to the voter suppression tactics contained within HB 194,” said Project Vote election counsel, Camille Wimbish.
“The pledge to hold off on any new elections bills until after November will ensure that procedural rule changes will not affect the outcome of this presidential election,” she said. ”It also provides an opportunity for pursuing true bipartisan support for thoughtful elections reform.”
HB 295 passed out of the House State Government And Elections committee yesterday, although advocates caution that it does not truly repeal HB 194 as it still limits early voting. Learn more about HB 295 here and here.
An important victory that brings us a step closer to modernizing our voter registration system at public assistance agencies was reached in Georgia this month. A coalition of national voting rights groups–including Project Vote, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Dēmos, the ACLU, the NAACP, and Dechert LLP–have secured a landmark settlement with the State of Georgia to ensure that voter registration is available to all public assistance applicants.
The lawsuit was brought by the coalition on behalf of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP and the Coalition for the People’s Agenda, alleging widespread violations of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
Today, an 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Arizona’s restrictive election law that required voter applicants to present documentary proof of citizenship to be registered to vote.
By a 9-2 vote, the en banc panel ruled that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 supersedes the state’s restrictive election law, Proposition 200. The NVRA states that voter registration forms “may not include any requirement for notarization or other formal authentication.” Proposition 200 required election officials to reject applications that did not include documentation proving citizenship.
“This is a major victory for voting rights in the state of Arizona,” said Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote, which was a plaintiff in the case, Gonzales v. Arizona. “This law has a chilling effect on voter registration, making the process less accessible and less convenient for Americans. The court agrees that Proposition 200 is in conflict with federal law, and we applaud the decision.”
The organization that has been exposed for pushing voter ID legislation across the country has announced today that they will eliminate their elections task force and instead focus on “jobs, free markets, and growth.”
“We are eliminating the [American Legislative Exchange Counsel] Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy,” said Rep. David Frizzell (R-Indianapolis), 2012 National Chairman of ALEC, in a statement. “While we recognize there are other critical, non-economic issues that are vitally important to millions of Americans, we believe we must concentrate on initiatives that spur competitiveness and innovation and put more Americans back to work.”
Stephanie Condon at CBSNews.com has more on the story:
read more…
Requiring photo ID to vote has become a contentious issue across the nation as more states—entrenched in partisan battles—pass these laws before the November election. Critics, including the Department of Justice, have asserted that these laws have a disproportionate impact on underrepresented communities. Strict voter ID laws in nine states may also prove to be significantly troublesome for citizens who face “unique challenges to obtaining accurate government-issued identification,” according to a new study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.
This November, 88,000 transgender people who have transitioned to living full-time in a gender different from the gender assigned at birth will be eligible to vote in the nine states that have adopted strict photo ID laws, including Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Laws are currently being challenged or pending approval in Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin.
According to the study, The Potential Impact of Voter Identification Laws on Transgender Voters, these laws may have a significant impact on transgender voters’ access to the ballot.
