Continuing in our Issues in Election Administration series, today Project Vote is releasing a new policy paper on Voter Registration at Public Assistance Agencies. You can read and download this new paper here.
Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) requires state public assistance agencies to affirmatively offer voter registration services to their clients. These provisions were included specifically to reach populations that are not only historically underrepresented in the electorate but are also less likely to be reached by other registration opportunities.
Considering the sheer volume of citizens who pass through public assistance offices in the United States, hundreds of thousands of Americans should be registering every year under Section 7 of the NVRA. In recent years, however, agencies have been neglecting their obligations under the law, and the numbers of voter registrations originating from public assistance agencies in many states have dwindled to a fraction of what they should be. (Just last month, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration called the NVRA “the election statute most often ignored.”)
This new policy paper explores what went wrong with implementation of the NVRA, and what can be done to fix it. It explains the requirements of Section 7, summarizes the history of noncompliance, and covers the legal battles to enforce the potential and promise of this landmark law. The paper also provides recommendations for best practices to ensure compliant, successful NVRA procedures at state agencies.
For several years now, Project Vote and our partners have been working through research, advocacy, and litigation to enforce the public agency provisions of the NVRA and ensure that low-income Americans, people with disabilities, and other public assistance clients are provided their legally guaranteed opportunity to register to vote. To learn more about the Public Agency Voter Registration Program, please go to https://www.projectvote.org/public-agency-registration.html