The federal Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the State of New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD) violated Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) by improperly withholding voter registration applications from certain public assistance clients. The decision came in a federal lawsuit brought against state officials by a coalition voting rights groups and attorneys, including the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Project Vote, and Dēmos; the Albuquerque law firm of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan, and the law firm of DLA Piper, on behalf of Albuquerque resident Shawna Allers.
This major development concerned the HSD policy of providing a voter registration application to a public assistance client only if the client specifically requests an application. Section 7 requires New Mexico and most other states to offer voter registration to public assistance clients when they apply for benefits, periodically recertify their benefits eligibility, or submit a change of address for receipt of benefits. Along with HSD officials, the New Mexico Secretary of State shares responsibility for ensuring that State agencies comply with the NVRA.
Yesterday’s decision affirmed a December 2010 judgment of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, holding that Section 7 public assistance agencies must provide a voter registration application to each client engaged in a covered transaction (that is, a benefits application, recertification or change of address), unless the client declines in writing, and that HSD’s policy violated the express language of the statute.
Prior to the filing of this lawsuit in July 2009, voter registration at public assistance offices in New Mexico had sharply declined from the level achieved shortly after the enactment of the NVRA, despite an increasing number of public assistance clients in the state. In the 2007-2008 reporting period, the number of public assistance clients applying for voter registration had gone down by about 90 percent from the 1995-1996 period and, on average, each public assistance office was registering fewer than 10 clients a month. An investigation conducted prior to the filing of the lawsuit revealed that none of the public assistance offices surveyed was regularly offering voter registration to its clients.
“This ruling makes clear that the goal and purpose of the NVRA, which is to increase the number of eligible citizens to vote, cannot be circumvented by states who seek to play semantics with the law,” says Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote.
Read more in today’s press release.