Bowen made “California the first state to designate its health exchange as a voter registration agency Wednesday, but others are expected to follow suit,” reported the Sacramento Bee last week.

“This is about making sure that all eligible Californians are offered the chance to register to vote,” said Bowen’s spokesperson, Shannon Velayas.

The NVRA or “Motor Voter” law was enacted in 1993 to increase the number of registered voters in federal elections. One provision of the law, Section 7, requires public agencies—including DMVs, public assistance, and disability offices—to provide their clients the opportunity to register to vote. Since the NVRA’s implementation, about 141 million people registered to vote at these agencies. The newest agency, Covered California, is expected to reach millions of low- and moderate-income families who are seeking to buy health insurance policies.

We applaud Secretary Bowen for showing great leadership and taking initiative to designate California’s health insurance exchange as a voter registration agency. Going forward, we hope Covered California will follow the law and offer citizens a meaningful opportunity to register to vote.

Photo by Randy Bayne via Creative Commons license

The #NVRAat20 Twitter party starts today at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT. Learn more about today’s festivities here.

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The NVRA is commonly known as the “Motor Voter” law because it requires every driver’s license application to include voter registration. The NVRA also mandated that voter registration be offered at public assistance agencies, created national standards for voter registration, and introduced safeguards against the wrongful purging of registrations.

Since the implementation of the NVRA, an estimated 141 million Americans have applied to get on the voter rolls through registration services the NVRA requires at DMVs, disability offices, and public agencies. In addition, countless more have been protected from purging due to the protections the NVRA provides.

“To the extent that Americans now think voter registration is easy, it’s largely because of the NVRA,” says Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote. “It streamlined what had been a confusing and often obstructive system of state laws, and expanded voter registration opportunities to make our democracy more accessible to all eligible Americans.”

The major provisions of the NVRA require:

• That registration services be offered at driver’s license departments, public assistance and disability agencies; 
• The creation of a simple federal voter registration form that state election official must accept as method of registration; 
• The additional mandate that states allow for mail-in registration; and
• Safeguards on the procedures to protect voters already on the rolls from being purged. 

While the NVRA has made the system more accessible for many, the law still faces unequal implementation. Following the highly successful first two years of implementation in 1995-6, in which over 2.6 million applications were received nationwide through public assistance agencies, many states began ignoring their responsibility to offer these services. This lack of compliance resulted in millions of low-income Americans being denied the opportunity to register to vote.

Now, 20 years after the signing, decades of inconsistent enforcement means that many states are still failing to offer voter registration through public agencies.

“Most states do a passing job at offering voter registration at their Department of Motor Vehicles offices, but many fail to do so at their public assistance agencies,” explains Sarah Brannon, director of the Public Agency Voter Registration Program at Project Vote. “The NVRA mandated that voter registration be offered at government offices that offer public assistance precisely because they connect with Americans who were less likely to register through other means, such as low-income people and persons with disabilities.”

In the past decade, Project Vote, its partners Demos and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, and other organizations, have assumed the burden of enforcing the NVRA through litigation and advocacy. The groups have intervened in 14 states across the country to ensure compliance at pubic agencies. The effort has resulted in an estimated 1.8 million more Americans applying to be registered.

For example, registrations through Ohio public agencies had fallen from over 100,000 in 1995-6, to just over 21,000 per year in 2005-6. That changed dramatically following a November 2009 settlement of a lawsuit brought by the coalition to bring the state into compliance. From January 2010 through December 2012, Ohio public agencies collected more than 552,000 applications. Other states, including Missouri and Indiana, have seen similarly dramatic increases in registrations following litigation in those states.

“Public agency registration works,” says Brannon. “When properly implemented, it remains one of our most effective ways of reaching those Americans who have historically been underrepresented at the voting booth.”

In addition to uneven implementation, the NVRA today faces challenges from some states that are adding new requirements for applying to register to vote. Arizona, for example, is requiring documentary proof of citizenship. Project Vote is one of several plaintiffs challenging that new requirement in Inter Tribal Counsel of Arizona v. Arizona.

“The NVRA was created precisely to end these sorts of unnecessary hurdles to registration,” says Slater. “There is little evidence to suggest that non-citizen voting is a widespread problem, but this fear is being used to undermine the intent and effect of the NVRA.

“The history of voting rights in America is one of hard-fought expansion of the franchise,” says Slater. “As we celebrate the anniversary of the NVRA, we must not go backwards, but must continue moving forward to ensure that voting is free, fair, and accessible to all Americans.”

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For more information, contact Project Vote’s media director, Sarah Massey at smassey[at]projectvote.org.

Join Project Vote, Demos, Fem2pt0, Asian American Justice Center, Fair Elections Legal Network, Advancement Project, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, League of Women Voters, Tennessee Citizen Action, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and others for the #NVRAat20 tweet chat on Monday, May 20 at 1 PM ET. We’ll discuss how Americans register to vote, the importance of this cornerstone law, how Project Vote and partners are taking action to improve enforcement of the NVRA to help more Americans register to vote, and what is the future for voter registration in the U.S.

Prior to the NVRA, there were widely divergent and confusing state laws that hindered voter registration. States each had their own forms, systems, requirements, and procedures for voter registration and voter list maintenance, creating too much confusion and too much potential for partisan manipulation. Voting rights, civic participation, and citizens pushed for the NVRA to make it easier for all Americans to register to vote and to maintain their registration.

The major provisions of the NVRA require:

• That registration services be offered at driver’s license bureaus; public assistance and disability agencies;
• The creation of a simple, national federal voter registration form that could substitute for the state forms that local officials had controlled (with the added mandate that states allow for mail-in registration); and
• Safeguards on the procedures for purging voters already on the rolls.

Thanks to the NVRA, an estimated 141 million Americans have applied to register to vote through their DMV or public agencies.

More work needs to be done to make voting free, fair, and accessible for all!

Take action in support of reducing barriers to voting. Let’s make Same Day Registration universally available. Sign the petition: http://chn.ge/10pAR2H

The NVRA has fulfilled its promise of streamlining voter registration and offering more access to voter registration through government offices. Now is the time for voters and advocates to push for Same Day Registration (also known as Election Day Registration), the next step in reducing barriers to voting caused by registration requirements. Same Day Registration means that eligible Americans can register when they go to the polls and cast their ballots. A national law was introduced this year, and we’ve created a petition to demand action to bring Same Day Registration to every state on the occasion of this important anniversary.

Photo by DH Parks via Creative Commons license

The state ranked “44th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia for voter participation” in 2012. The low turnout was attributed to Hurricane Sandy, as well as other convenience issues.

“After Hurricane Sandy strained voters and poll workers last November, we all recognize that change to our election system is vital,” said Diana Kasdan, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice. “Fortunately, one part of the solution, early voting, has a proven track record. It is already available in more than half of the country, hugely popular and benefits election officials and voters alike.”

The bill, voted on party lines, would provide early voting 15 days before Election Day in general elections and eight days in primary and special elections.

“This legislation will make it more convenient for workers with long commutes as well as seniors,” said Chair of the Election Law Committee Michael Cusick. “It will also alleviate confusion and strain at the polls on Election Day evidenced by the fact that almost 30 percent of voters, nationally, chose to utilize early voting in presidential elections.”

Governor Andrew Cuomo reportedly supports early voting in New York.

Photo by Mr. Jincks via Creative Commons

A new report today from the Associated Press shows that the 2012 national election was historic due to changes in which Americans voted.

“America’s blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time ….”  These data show that black Americans are voting at levels much closer to the numbers who can vote and turned out stronger than whites in the last election.

“Unlike other minority groups, the rise in voting for the slow-growing black population is due to higher turnout. While blacks make up 12 percent of the share of eligible voters, they represented 13 percent of total 2012 votes cast, according to exit polling. That was a repeat of 2008, when blacks ‘outperformed’ their eligible voter share for the first time on record.”

The report goes on to examine different demographic groups and how they participate in voting.

The big, big news is that the electorate is becoming more diverse and more representational as minority populations are increasingly participating as voters. Project Vote has worked for many years to achieve a more representational electorate. Our argument is that as more voices are heard, our elected leaders will be more representative of the population. But, there is still a long way to go with over 50 million Americans still not registered to vote.

Photo by League of Women Voters of California via Creative Commons license

In recent years, Indiana has been gaining a reputation as one of the states most hostile to voting rights. It was one of the first states to implement strict photo voter ID, and earlier this year the legislature considered a rule to prevent students who pay out-of-state tuition from voting. Now, SB 519 would result in another reduction of voting rights in the state.

“Voting should be free, fair, and accessible to all eligible Indiana voters,” says Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote. “No eligible voter should be turned away on Election Day because their names have been purged from the rolls. And no eligible voter should risk having their application rejected due to unfair or unclear laws.”

Today, Common Cause Indiana, Gamaliel, Gamaliel of Indiana, Project Vote, and Transforming Action through Power (TAP) wrote to Governor Pence, urging him to veto the bill. Their letter points out a number of problems that would create risks for Indiana voters:

• SB 519 proposes engaging in a large-scale data-matching program for voter roll maintenance. These sorts of programs have repeatedly proven unreliable, and are likely to remove eligible voters due to mismatching and data entry errors. SB 519 does not contain clear enough safeguards to protect voters from wrongful purging.
• Federal law ensures that applications postmarked by the voter registration deadline are to be considered submitted on time. However, this bill ignores that law, and contains dangerously vague language about the submission of registrations that could result in confusion and missed deadlines.
• The bill would change the state voter registration form to require unnecessary and burdensome information from the person collecting an application. This could discourage people from volunteering for voter registration drives. But the larger problem is that, even when an eligible applicant’s information is entered accurately and completely, that registration could be considered “incomplete” because of an error by the canvasser. Additionally, the language of the bill is troublingly vague as to how (or whether) incomplete voter registration applications would be processed.

“As we’ve seen in other states, these kinds of ill-conceived election procedures all increase the likelihood that eligible voters may be disenfranchised,” says Slater. “Governor Pence should reject this bill, and focus on passing laws that make it easier, not harder, for Hoosiers to get and stay on the rolls.”

Photo via Creative Commons license

Mr. Bartlett, who has been executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections since 1993, discussed the steps that North Carolina has taken to increase compliance with Section 7 of the NVRA. Mr. Bartlett noted that he initially believed the state’s compliance “was on auto-pilot,” but after the first few years, North Carolina’s compliance with the registration requirements declined.

In response, the state collaborated with organizations, including Project Vote and Demos, to improve the state’s Section 7 compliance in 2006. The result was a 14-point compliance plan that included increasing communication with agency heads within the state government that had voter registration responsibilities; conducting regular voter registration trainings and workshops at agencies; conducting “train the trainer” workshops; and conducting random in-person checks of agencies with mandated voter registration responsibilities (described not as a “gotcha,” but rather a “wellness check”).

According to Mr. Bartlett, the most important aspects of the compliance plan were the increased communication between agencies (including using email to quickly and efficiently ask and answer questions) and the more regular training programs because they significantly reduced the negative impact of employee turnover.

In the first year of implementation (from 2006-2007), voter registration at North Carolina’s public assistance agencies increased by 268 percent. Between 2008 and 2009, the increase was an additional 29 percent. Furthermore, voters from all racial demographics have benefitted from North Carolina’s compliance plan. For example, the voter registration rate of African-Americans at public assistance agencies rose 346 percent between 2006 and 2012, while the registration rate of whites rose 271 percent in the same period. Since 2006, a total of 258,537 voters have been registered through North Carolina’s agency-based voter registration programs.

Mr. Bartlett noted that the primary focus for the State Board of Elections (SBE) in coordinating compliance with Section 7 has been to “create a partnership atmosphere [between the SBE, individual local agencies and their state umbrella agency, and the County Board of Elections] wherein multiple entities share responsibility for Section 7 compliance.”

Mr. Bartlett discussed several other improvements that have led to increased compliance with Section 7, notably the development of an online preference form system, which allows agencies to electronically record whether a client wishes to register to vote. This tool saves money by reducing the need to print paper-based forms, and also provides real-time reporting for SBE staff to use in monitoring agency compliance.

Finally, the Commission received testimony from Lisa Danetz, Senior Counsel at Demos, which “seeks an America where everyone has an equal say in our democracy.” Project Vote and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law are partners with Demos in this work and have been involved in all the litigation work described by Ms. Dantez.

Ms. Danetz noted that the submission of voter registration forms at public assistance agencies across the country declined by 80 percent from 1996 to 2006. In response to this decline, Demos and its partners—including Project Vote—conducted investigations in states across the country. These investigations revealed several issues with agency-based voter registration, such as agencies that conducted inadequate staff training and local offices that did not have voter registration applications on site. As a direct result of these investigations, Demos and its partners have worked cooperatively with eleven states to achieve compliance, successfully sued an additional six states (Ohio, Missouri, New Mexico, Indiana, Georgia, and Pennsylvania), and are currently in pending litigation with another three states (Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Nevada).

The resulting settlement agreements have included strong monitoring, reporting, training and oversight provisions (many of which are similar to North Carolina’s successful implementation plan). Since these public interest organizations have begun their Section 7 compliance work, almost two million more low-income citizens have registered to vote at public assistance offices than would otherwise be expected to register in those states.  Moreover, of the 10 states that collected the most voter registration applications at public assistance agencies in 2009-2010, seven of them had previously had some compliance intervention from either the Department of Justice or public interest groups.  (Data from 2011-2012 will not be available until June 2013.)

In response to criticism by Mr. Torchinsky that the increase in voter registration at public assistance agencies in recent years has been caused not by the efforts of Demos and its partners, but by the economy and resulting increase in caseload at these agencies, Ms. Danetz noted that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program caseload was higher in 2005-2006 than in 1995-1996, yet the number of voter registrations was significantly higher in 1995-1996. Ms. Danetz also addressed concerns raised by Mr. Torchinksy that NVRA issues should be settled out of court in a cooperative manner by noting that Demos and their partners have worked cooperatively with eleven states to address issues with agency-based voter registration.

Furthermore, in states where litigation has completed, three-to-four year settlement agreements have been reached between the parties. Ms. Danetz also noted that, according to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas E. Perez, 4,171 voter registration applications were submitted in the first four months of the Rhode Island agreement compared to just 457 in the entire two-year period prior to the litigation.

The Commission will accept comments from the public until close of business on May 19^th. Comments may be submitted by e-mail at publiccomments – at – usccr.gov or mailed to the USCCR Office of General Counsel at 1331 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 1150, Washington DC 20425.

Corey Peterson is a second-year law student at American University’s Washington College of Law. She joins Project Vote as legal intern for spring 2013.

According to Chris Kromm at Facing South, the poll (sponsored by the N.C. League of Women Voters and Democracy North Carolina) found that support for ID laws drops when voters learn about the negative impact on seniors, African-Americans, and other voters who typically lack ID.

Kromm notes that the survey asked “something most surveys don’t: whether voters would also support non-photo ID alternatives.” The survey found that while 75 percent favor a photo ID requirement to vote, 70 percent said they “would not turn away a registered voter who doesn’t have one…”

So why pass strict photo ID laws if they make voting more difficult for certain groups? Firstly, 40 percent of surveyed voters still believe that voter impersonation fraud is commonplace, despite little evidence to support this belief, Kromm writes. He adds that Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis, a voter ID supporter, admitted that fraud is not so much a problem as it is a  “potential risk” that concerns voters.

The poll, however, also indicates that voters aren’t as paranoid about the election system as politicians like Tillis think: an overwhelming majority of these voters also agree that substantial evidence of a voter impersonation problem should be provided by legislators “before they pass laws that make voting more difficult.”

That shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Photo by jeffreylcohen via Creative Commons 

The Hazel D. Plant Voter Registration Act would remove the five-year waiting period that  people with a criminal history are forced to wait before having their voting rights restored. Governor Jack Markell is expected to sign the bill, according to Shirley Min at NewsWorks.

“As Americans we believe in second chances and the right to vote,” said Ben Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP. “Today’s vote in the Delaware Senate ensures that when a fellow citizen who has made a mistake, did their time, and paid their debt to society will be able to join the rest of their fellow Americans in performing our civic duty of voting.”

“The late Hazel D. Plant relentlessly fought for the empowerment of all Delaware citizens,” said bill sponsor and state Rep. Helene Keeley. “Today’s vote honors and ends part of that fight and will empower a new group of Delaware citizens that now have a voice in what happens in their communities.”