One of Project Vote’s core approaches to pursuing the empowerment of marginalized and underrepresented voters is through its Public Agency Registration Project. In 1993 Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Section 7 of the NVRA mandates that state public assistance agencies such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program offer voter registration opportunities when a client applies for benefits, renews benefits, or submits a change of address. The NVRA was enacted with the goal of strengthening participation among historically underrepresented populations and Section 7 is especially important because it was designed to provide many low-income Americans with a convenient avenue to political participation. Project Vote works with state agencies and, when necessary, initiates legal action in order to ensure compliance with the NVRA.
A recent article in Bloomberg View has addressed some of the setbacks to putting the NVRA into practice, provided compelling evidence of longstanding demographic disparities in political participation that the NVRA was enacted to address, and highlighted some of work conducted by Project Vote and our public interest coalition partners to further the implementation and goals of the NVRA.
In the years following the implementation of the NVRA, 2.5 million Americans were registered to vote through public assistance agencies in accordance with Section 7. However, registrations through these agencies declined precipitously in subsequent years. The failure of states and agencies to comply with the registration opportunity requirements of the NVRA was a major factor in this drop-off. To illustrate the disparity of NVRA implementation between the states, the article notes that in 2011-2012, 10 states received less than 1 percent of their voter registration applications through public assistance agencies, whereas other states received as much as 16 percent of their new voter registration applications through public assistance agencies.
Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bloomberg article also demonstrated persistent registration disparities that highlight why the campaign to ensure compliance with the NVRA is still so important today. While over 70 percent of Americans making over $75,000 a year vote, this figure is just 40 percent for lower income Americans. However, Americans who are registered to vote participate at much closer levels regardless of income level. Section 7 of the NVRA therefore has the potential to drastically increase voter registration and participation among low-income Americans.
Project Vote and partners have successful completed litigation under the NVRA in nine states and worked cooperatively with numerous state agencies and officials to ensure that public assistance agency procedures are compliant with the voter registration provisions of the NVRA. Our most recent success came in March 2015, when public interest coalition members reached a settlement with the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) to enter compliance with the NVRA. Under the terms of this settlement, the DTA will automatically distribute voter registration applications to citizens applying for public assistance, provide multilingual assistance and deliver voter registration applications to local election officials, and establish oversight procedures to ensure that DTA employees are providing the necessary voter registration services. Project Vote is eager to continue its work to ensure nationwide compliance with this important federal statute.