Today Project Vote is proud to release The NVRA at Fifteen: A Report to Congress, the first
comprehensive report evaluating the implementation of this landmark law.
Written by voting rights attorney Estelle Rogers, the new report evaluates how
four major provisions of the NVRA have—and more importantly haven’t—been successfully implemented:
the “motor voter” program, the mail-in registration form, public assistance
agency registration, and list maintenance procedures.
As Frances Fox Piven, noted voting rights scholar and
activist, explains in her foreword to The
NVRA at Fifteen, “the reform of American registration procedures has met
widespread resistance, some of it attributable no doubt to bureaucratic inertia,
and some of it perhaps politically motivated.” Rogers explains how lack of
enforcement, failures of state and federal leadership, and restrictive court
decisions have left the full potential of the NVRA unrealized, and have left
millions of disenfranchised Americans still awaiting the promise of a truly
inclusive democracy.
This new report is also a call for renewed leadership to improve
the implementation of the NVRA nationwide, recommending practices that states
can adopt to improve their compliance, offering suggestions for legislative
changes Congress could enact, and emphasizing the importance of ensuring that
the Department of Justice finally commits fully to enforcing the NVRA.
To read this important new report, click here.