An important federal law gives millions of citizens the opportunity to take part in the political process when they might not otherwise. The National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA) purpose is to make registering to vote easier and more accessible and yet, many states do not comply. Project Vote works to help remedy this issue in several states and Alabama serves as another example of how states can follow the law and bring more citizens into the electorate.
In 2012, Project Vote and our partners—on behalf of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP—put Alabama on notice “for violating the state’s federally mandated responsibility to offer ten of thousands of low-income citizens the opportunity to register to vote.”
“Our agreement with the state and its public assistance agencies has been a consistent force in creating a more representative electorate throughout the state.”
The letter details significant violations of the NVRA and demands immediate action from the Alabama Secretary of State as well as the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR) and Medicaid Agency.
In 2014, Alabama state officials signed settlement agreements after more than a year of negotiations.
Alabama’s settlement agreement includes reporting from the DHR, the Alabama Medicaid Agency, and the secretary of state (SOS), which is delivered on a monthly and quarterly basis. The data files describe the voter registration activity at each agency. The settlement agreement remains in effect until the end of 2016.
With all that has been happening in Alabama (please read more here and here), our agreement with the state and its public assistance agencies has been a consistent force in creating a more representative electorate throughout the state.
Since the start of the agreement in February 2014, there has been a steady stream of voter registration applications being collected through DHR and Medicaid. This is evident in the visualization above. Alabama reports an average 3,900 voter registrations collected from DHR and Medicaid on a monthly basis. Although data could always be better, this is actually a pretty decent outcome of this agreement, especially considering the visuals I am going to discuss below.
Much like the visualizations you can find in my two previous posts about Georgia and Pennsylvania, below is a visual of the number of voter registration applications that Alabama reported to have collected at public assistance agencies in the last 15 years. The reports were submitted to the U.S. Election Administration Commission (EAC) .
Keep in mind that Project Vote’s settlement agreement began in February of 2014 when looking at the above visual.
“Just as there are peaks in voter registration at these agencies surrounding election cycles, I fully expect to see a rise in the number of voter registrations coming from DHR and Medicaid in the coming months. “
During the first year of our settlement agreement, 2014, the Alabama SOS reported to us that 44,712 voter registration applications were collected and originated from DHR and Medicaid. Alabama reported to the EAC for the two-year period of 2013 and 2014, a total of 69,366 voter registrations were collected at public assistance agencies. This spike in data reported to the EAC can be seen as a direct result of the settlement agreement, considering the years prior (2011-2012), Alabama reported collecting only 4,986 voter registrations at a public assistance agencies. One only has to look at Alabama’s public assistance agency voter registration rates from previous years to understand the importance of the state’s agreement to come into compliance with the law.
Just as there are peaks in voter registration at these agencies surrounding election cycles, I fully expect to see a rise in the number of voter registrations coming from DHR and Medicaid in the coming months. I will be sure to update this report as we continue to receive data through 2016 to see if my predictions come to fruition, or not
Based on how well reporting in 2015 went, I am looking forward to having data from all of 2016 to not only analyze how well NVRA compliance works, but how much it really works in an election year, such as this one, with the hopes of registering a more representative electorate. Stay tuned.
Source: “NVRA Studies,” Election Assistance Commission, accessed June 15, 2016.
