As we enter this important election year, I am pleased to announce the first major voting rights victory of 2014.
In Alabama, state officials have signed settlement agreements to ensure that public assistance clients will be provided the opportunity to register to vote, as guaranteed by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). This important development comes as a result of more than a year of negotiation between state officials and the Alabama NAACP, represented by Project Vote, Demos, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the law firms of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP and Copeland Franco.
In June 2012, Project Vote and our allies sent a letter to Alabama state officials—including those at the Secretary of State’s office, the Department of Human Resources, and the Alabama Medicaid Agency—outlining the results of an investigation that found violations of the NVRA.
Now, Alabama Medicaid and DHR have agreed to take important steps to ensure compliance, including automatically distributing voter registration applications to clients in person, and mailing applications to clients with remote transactions. According to the agreement, which runs through 2016, the Secretary of State’s office and the voting rights groups will monitor compliance to make sure registration opportunities are provided.
“With these settlement agreements, low-income residents of Alabama will have the access to voter registration that they are guaranteed under federal law,” said Sarah Brannon, director of the Public Agency Registration Program at Project Vote, in today’s press release on the case.
The Public Agency Voter Registration Program, our partnership with Demos and the Lawyers’ Committee to achieve compliance with the public assistance provisions of the NVRA, continues to be one of our most effective strategies to ensure that eligible low-income Americans can register to vote. We are pleased to begin the new year with this important victory, and we look forward to keeping you informed of our progress to come.
Photo by Larry Miller via Creative Commons