The alarming trend of conservative-fueled fears of voter fraud may now have a chilling effect on legitimate votes.
According to a Washington Independent report last week, voter registration rates have declined by as much as 26 percent this election cycle when compared to new registrations in 2006. Fewer groups are engaged in registering voters during this election cycle, resulting in fewer voters, “especially in poorer areas that are traditionally underrepresented and therefore the usual target of voter registration drives.”
The Washington Independent cites both legislative and public attacks on voter registration drives for the drop in registration efforts and the overall decline in voter registration rates.
“I wouldn’t underestimate the public attacks,” says Wendy Weiser, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Project. “It’s not a law prohibiting you, so it’s a little harder to demonstrate, but the chilling effects have nonetheless been palpable. People are nervous to do drives and support groups that do this kind of work.”
The impact of voter registration efforts in general is significant. In 2008, nearly nine million citizens, or eight percent, reported having registered “at a voter registration drive,” according to Project Vote’s 2009 report, Representational Bias in the 2008 Electorate. This figure is likely a serious underestimation of the total impact of voter registration drives as “9.4 million citizens (another 8 percent) reported that they registered ‘at a school, hospital, or on campus’—all locations where voter registration drives are often conducted by civic organizations and student groups.” And yet another 9.7 report registered through mail-in voter registration applications, likely sent by voter drives or from organizations that distributed these forms through the postal service or electronic mail.
“There’s a grain of truth to rampant voter fraud fears. The rolls are, indeed, riddled with names of dead people, cartoon characters, duplicate entries, and obsolete addresses — but there’s little evidence that those errors lead to much in the way of fraudulent votes,” wrote Eliza Newlin Carney at The National Journal today. “A five-year investigation by the Bush Justice Department, for one, turned up virtually no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”
While the unsubstantiated fear of voter fraud has suppressed voter registration efforts by third party groups, it doesn’t appear that state governments are “picking up the slack.”
The Washington Independent continues, “Voting rights advocates argue that many states aren’t adequately complying with requirements in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to register voters automatically at state agencies and keep their addresses up to date when they move. The result is a gaping hole in the country’s voter registration efforts that threatens to undo the positive strides that have been made over the last decade and a half.”
Read more from the Brennan Center here.
Read more on voter registration drive restrictions here.
Read more on public agency registration under the NVRA here.