DAVID FIRESTONE, THE LOYAL OPPOSITION via NEW YORK TIMES
Imposing rigorous identification requirements isn’t the only way to keep poor people and minorities from voting. Another strategy is to restrict the flow of information about elections to those on public assistance, so that they never even learn of their right to register. That happens to be illegal, and this week Georgia became the latest state to promise to stop this practice.
Many states have a history of refusing to comply with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires civil servants to actively offer a registration form to anyone applying for welfare, food stamps, or other public benefits; renewing their benefits; or changing their address. It’s not enough to simply have a stack of forms sitting on a counter somewhere. State employees have to ask each applicant if he or she would like to register to vote.
Georgia wasn’t doing that, said Sarah Brannon of Project Vote, a non-partisan group that works to increase participation in elections. State workers there would provide a form to anyone who asked, but wouldn’t routinely remind applicants they could register. Since most people didn’t know about the opportunity, they wouldn’t ask.
After Project Vote and a coalition of several other voting rights groups filed a lawsuit, the state agreed to a settlement. Georgia will not only offer registration forms to all applicants, but will properly train public assistance employees and provide data on its registration efforts to the voting groups. The state will also offer registration to people who call the benefits offices or apply online.
Over several years, similar settlements have been reached with other states that weren’t following the law, including Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and New Mexico. The legal effort has been effective almost everywhere, significantly increasing the enrollment of low-income voters. In Missouri, for example, registrations at public assistance agencies went up from 8,000 before the 2008 lawsuit to an average of 115,000 a year.
Many Republicans oppose this effort. The Georgia Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, complained that the state had been forced to comply with “outdated and unneeded federal voter registration mandates.” But the law was created for a purpose: to address the egregiously low voting rates at the bottom of the income scale. It’s troubling that Mr. Kemp and many in his party, for purely political reasons, don’t share that goal, but they still have to comply with a law that is anything but outdated.
Read more at the New York Times.