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In preparation for the 2010 legislative season, Project Vote’s Election Administration (EA) Program is releasing
a series of election administration policy recommendation memos for 11 states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
These
state-specific memos assess current state election laws in six key areas: (1)Voter Registration; (2) List Maintenance; (3) Early
Voting and Same-Day Registration; (4) Voter Intimidation and Suppression; (5)
Public Agency Registration; and (6) Provisional Voting, identifying opportunities for states to improve the
fairness and overall quality of their election processes.
To read the memos click here.
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TRENTON, NJ - The
Department of the Public Advocate has joined a coalition of voting rights
groups to file papers with the State Board of Education today proposing new
regulations aimed at ramping up voter registration efforts in New Jersey
schools.
Joining
with two national nonpartisan advocacy groups, Project Vote and the Fair
Elections Legal Network, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union of New
Jersey in signing the petition, the Department of the Public Advocate has asked
for rules to ensure all New Jersey high schools distribute voter registration
forms to eligible seniors and educate them about the fundamental importance of
voting. Additionally, the proposal would mandate that schools report to
the state with details about their compliance with the law and the number of
students they helped register.
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Read more...
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Representational Bias in the 2008 Electorate reviews
the story of who was eligible to vote, who was registered to vote, and
who did vote in the 2008 general election. Analyzing the November
Voting and Registration supplements of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current
Population Survey, the report offers detailed information on
registration rates and voting behavior based on key demographic
factors, including race/ethnicity, age, gender and marital status,
income, education, residential mobility, and disability status. The
report also provides registration and turnout rates for each state,
with comparative rankings.
By comparing this data with those from other recent elections, the
report presents a picture of the growing electorate in the United
States, and identifies the changes in the extent to which participation
in our federal elections is–and is not–representative of the population
that is eligible to vote in America.
To read the full report click here. |
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Cleveland, OH--Low-income
Ohio citizens will be ensured access to voter registration at Ohio public
assistance offices as a result of a settlement agreement submitted to Federal
District Court Judge Patricia A. Gaughan over this past holiday weekend.
The settlement
successfully resolves a three-year old lawsuit filed against the Ohio Secretary
of State (SOS) and the Director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family
Services (ODJFS) in September 2006 by Lorain resident Carrie Harkless,
Cleveland resident Tameca Mardis, and the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) charging widespread violations of the
federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Section 7 of the NVRA requires
public assistance agencies to provide voter registration opportunities to their
clients.
Extensive
pre-suit investigation and discovery in the case revealed that many of Ohio’s county public assistance
offices were ignoring their responsibilities to provide voter registration to
their low-income clients.
Currently, only seventy-one percent of low-income Ohioans are registered
to vote compared to ninety percent of affluent Ohioans.
Before the lawsuit,
there was no state official overseeing the state’s compliance with the federal
law. Although Ohio has designated
the Secretary of State as its chief election official responsible for NVRA
compliance, at the time the lawsuit was filed, then-Secretary of State Kenneth
Blackwell contended that the state’s obligation to provide voter registration
services to its low-income residents was satisfied by the maintenance of a
toll-free hotline for public assistance offices to call. ODJFS claimed that
Ohio law prohibited it from ensuring compliance by county offices.
“As a result of the
steps the Secretary of State and ODJFS Director will take, we expect hundreds
of thousands of voting-eligible low-income Ohioans to be registered to vote,”
said Lisa Danetz, Senior Counsel in the Democracy Program at Demos and co-lead
counsel for the plaintiffs.
"We applaud the integration of voter registration into agency
processes as well as the planned monitoring of the county public assistance
offices."
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Read more...
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Today Project Vote is proud to release The NVRA at Fifteen: A Report to Congress, the first
comprehensive report evaluating the implementation of this landmark law.
Written by voting rights attorney Estelle Rogers, the new report evaluates how
four major provisions of the NVRA have—and more importantly haven’t—been successfully implemented:
the “motor voter” program, the mail-in registration form, public assistance
agency registration, and list maintenance procedures.
As Frances Fox Piven, noted voting rights scholar and
activist, explains in her foreword to The
NVRA at Fifteen, “the reform of American registration procedures has met
widespread resistance, some of it attributable no doubt to bureaucratic inertia,
and some of it perhaps politically motivated.” Rogers explains how lack of
enforcement, failures of state and federal leadership, and restrictive court
decisions have left the full potential of the NVRA unrealized, and have left
millions of disenfranchised Americans still awaiting the promise of a truly
inclusive democracy.
This new report is also a call for renewed leadership to improve
the implementation of the NVRA nationwide, recommending practices that states
can adopt to improve their compliance, offering suggestions for legislative
changes Congress could enact, and emphasizing the importance of ensuring that
the Department of Justice finally commits fully to enforcing the NVRA.
To read this important new report, click here.
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On July 9, Project Vote and a coalition of voting rights groups filed lawsuits in Indiana and New Mexico, to compel public assistance agencies in
those states to provide their clients with the opportunity to register
to vote. Today, Project Vote is releasing a new report, Registering Low-Income Voters through Public Assistance Agencies in Missouri, which shows just how well this program can work.
Missouri went from having one of the worst public agency registration rates in the nation to having one of the best through the work of the Public Agency Voter Registration Project, a coalition of voting rights groups to bring states into compliance with the public agency registration requirements of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). This new case study explains how this success was achieved, from the first surveys to document the poor performance of Missouri public agencies, through the court order that compelled compliance in July 2008, all the way through to last month's successful settlement of the lawsuit. As a result of this work, public assistance agencies in the state of Missouri went from collecting fewer than 8,000 applications a year to collecting over 100,000 applications in just eight months.
To read this exciting new case study, click here.
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