Today, Project Vote released a new suite of materials focusing on public agency voter registration. As you know, Project Vote is committed to ensuring that states fulfill the promise of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which requires–among other provisions–that state public assistance agencies offer voter registration to their clients. These new materials are designed to help advocates, legislators, and election officials make that vision a reality.
As Project Vote has documented, low-income Americans remain dramatically underrepresented in the electorate. Given the tens of millions of Americans who pass through public assistance agencies every year, full compliance with the NVRA nationwide should be our highest priority in reducing these disparities. Yet too many states neglect their responsibilities, and public agency registrations remain a fraction of what they should be.
Project Vote’s new policy paper, Voter Registration Services at Public Assistance Agencies, explains the vision and requirements of the NVRA, and explores how implementation of the law has fallen short in too many states across the country. (The information in this paper is also available as a shorter, more condensed legislative brief.) These materials explain how, by implementing a few simple recommendations and best practices, states can avoid litigation and ensure that the basic civil rights of millions of citizens are preserved.
For proof that public agency registration is effective, one need look no further than our newly updated case study about the remarkable results in the state of Missouri. The case study explains how, after Project Vote and our partners brought a lawsuit against the state, Missouri public agencies went from collecting fewer than 8,000 applications a year to averaging over 10,000 per month. (And this success in Missouri is not unique. Agencies in the state of Ohio–after parties agreed to settle a similar case in November–collected nearly 50,000 voter registration applications in just the first three months of 2010.)
Our work is far from complete–in fact, lawsuits are currently pending against Indiana and New Mexico—but there is no question that public agency registration works. We are pleased to release these new tools to help convey this message, and we hope that you find them useful in working towards this goal.