On July 9, Project Vote and a coalition of voting rights groups—including Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Demos—filed lawsuits in Indiana and New Mexico, to compel public assistance agencies in
those states to provide their clients with the opportunity to register
to vote. Today, Project Vote is releasing a new report, Registering Low-Income Voters through Public Assistance Agencies in Missouri, which shows just how well this program can work.
Missouri went from having one of the worst public agency registration rates in the nation to having one of the best through the work of the Public Agency Voter Registration Project, a coalition of voting rights groups to bring states into compliance with the public agency registration requirements of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). This new case study explains how this success was achieved, from the first surveys to document the poor performance of Missouri public agencies, through the court order that compelled compliance in July 2008, all the way through to last month’s successful settlement of the lawsuit. As a result of this work, public assistance agencies in the state of Missouri went from collecting fewer than 8,000 applications a year to collecting over 100,000 applications in just eight months.
To read this exciting new case study, click here.