A pivotal agreement was reached yesterday between the Arizona’s Department of Economic Security (DES) and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to implement federal law that requires the state to provide voter registration services at public assistance agencies. Earlier this year, on January 29, 2008, Project Vote and Demos sent a letter on behalf of ACORN to Secretary of State Jan Brewer notifying her that Arizona was not in compliance with the public agency provisions of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
In response to the agreement between DOJ and DES, Michael Slater, deputy director of Project Vote, had the following statement:
“This agreement ends the need for litigation and means Arizona will bring voter registration to the state’s low-income communities. Project Vote applauds the Justice Department and Arizona’s Department of Economic Security for working together for the benefit of all Arizonans.
Arizona has a responsibility to follow federal voting rights laws. One of those laws requires public assistance agencies to offer voter registration opportunities to clients. As Project Vote has extensively documented, DES was not fulfilling its responsibility. In a notice letter to Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer, we informed her that registrations from public assistance agencies had declined 70 percent over the past 12 years. We also shared with Secretary Brewer findings from survey research that indicated a majority of clients were not provided an opportunity to register to vote. Partly as a consequence of Arizona’s noncompliance with the NVRA, voter registration rates for low-income Arizonans lag 24 percentage points behind the state’s more affluent residents.
Yesterday’s agreement commits DES to a number of steps that will ensure voter registration services are provided to clients of public assistance agencies as required by law. DES must ensure that all clients are provided with a voter registration application, including those clients who interact with the agency remotely, and assistance in completing the form. DES must provide annual training to its staff, monitor its performance and audit its results. The agreement is in force until May 1, 2011.
The Justice Department’s actions to enforce the law are a welcome departure from its recent inattention to states’ lack of compliance with the NVRA’s public agency registration provisions. It comes after repeated expressions of concern by several Congressional committees and by Project Vote.
On April 24, 2008, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and five other members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary wrote to Attorney General Mukasey asking him to make enforcement the public agency registration requirements of the NVRA a Department priority. Two weeks earlier, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, chair of the Subcommittee on Elections, wrote a similar letter to Attorney General Mukasey. The Justice Department’s most recent previous enforcement action was six years ago against the State of Tennessee.
All Americans deserve an opportunity to register to vote. The Justice Department’s decision to begin holding states accountable for their registration responsibilities under the NVRA is an important step to achieving this goal.”