I began this series discussing Georgia’s settlement agreement and the good that it has done for working towards a more representative electorate by enforcing compliance with the National Voter Registration Act to ensure more citizens have the opportunity to register to vote.
Project Vote assists states with implementation of the NVRA’s requirements. Most of the states with which Project Vote has or has had some sort of agreement are similarly situated in terms of population and the average number of individuals participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program on a monthly basis as reported by the USDA. Therefore, it is only natural that throughout this series I will likely be comparing each state’s trends against one another.
In 2012, Project Vote and our partners filed suit in Pennsylvania on behalf of the Black Political Empowerment Project and ACTION United. The plaintiffs alleged significant violations of the NVRA against the secretaries of the Department of State, Department of Public Welfare and Department of Health. In the same year, the case was resolved and settlement agreement was signed. (Learn more about the specifics of the settlement agreement here.)
“In any given month, Pennsylvania reports to Project Vote that between 300,000 and 400,000 individuals are served each month at the public assistance agency offices.”
Pennsylvania’s settlement agreement was very similar to that of Georgia’s: Pennsylvania’s Department of Public Welfare (DPW), Department of Health (DOH), and the Secretary of State agreed to provide detailed data tracking delivered on a monthly and quarterly basis of their voter registration activities. The settlement agreement remained in effect for three years. Although the agreement has ended, Pennsylvania continues to provide Project Vote monthly and quarterly reports.
In any given month, Pennsylvania reports to Project Vote that between 300,000 and 400,000 individuals are served each month at the public assistance agency offices throughout the state. Per the terms of the settlement agreement, almost all of these individuals are offered the opportunity to register to vote.
After Project Vote’s intervention, the number of voter registration applications collected by Pennsylvania public assistance agencies have increased sixfold.
The initial months of the settlement agreement, as portrayed by the data visualization below, shows a slow start. However, beginning in 2013—due to Pennsylvania’s continuous efforts to provide voter registration at DPW and DOH—the data shows how well the state maintained a high level of voter registration at these agencies.
It is expected that interest in voter registration ebbs and flows with the tides of elections. However, when compared to Georgia’s visualization using very similar data, it is impressive how Pennsylvania maintained such high voter registration rates throughout the state. (Learn more about Georgia’s NVRA compliance here.)
Many states are legally bound under the National Voter Registration Act to report every two years to the U.S. Election Administration Commission (EAC) a series of data that includes (but is certainly not limited to) the number of voter registrations collected at public assistance offices. The reporting to the EAC is a burden for many states that do not have a good technological infrastructure to answer all of the survey’s questions. The terms of our settlement agreements often nudge the state to advance the technological systems they use for the collection of this data. This technological advance will produce many positive results for the state, but most importantly, it will assist in providing information to the EAC for years to come.
In this visual, the first four, very short columns are Pennsylvania’s voter registrations originating from a public assistance office as reported to the EAC. The three columns on the right are totals from the first chart, “Pennsylvania SOS Reported Voter Registrations Collected at Section 7 Agency,” just condensed and beginning with 2013. After Project Vote’s intervention in Pennsylvania, the number of voter registration applications collected by public assistance agencies in the state have increased more than six times the totals from years prior.
Pennsylvania’s commitment to following the law and providing clients of government agencies with the opportunity to register to vote has been driving force in creating a more representative electorate.
Source: “NVRA Studies,” Election Assistance Commission, accessed May 23, 2016.
