Scott Novakowski, a senior policy analyst for Demos, submitted this post as a guest blogger for The Hill.

As the nation is preparing for the 2008 presidential election, a recent report by Demos and Project Vote — two non-partisan voting rights organizations — reveals that states across the nation are failing to register low-income voters in public assistance agencies as required by the National Voter Registration Act. Unequal Access: Neglecting the National Voter Registration Act, 1995-2007 documents the dramatic national decline in voter registration applications from public assistance agencies since initial implementation of the law in 1995. Statistical analysis and field investigations confirm that this drop is largely due to states’ failure to comply with the law.

Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in 1993 to “increase the number of eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for Federal office.� Recognizing that unfair and discriminatory registration laws had a detrimental effort on democratic participation, Congress sought to dramatically reduce barriers to voter registration. In addition to law’s well-known “motor voter� provision requiring voter registration to be offered at motor vehicle departments, Section 7 of the NVRA requires states to offer voter registration at all offices providing public assistance benefits. Specifically, offices administering Food Stamps, Medicaid, TANF, and WIC must provide the opportunity to register to all individuals applying for, recertifying, or changing their address with respect to benefits.

Unfortunately registrations from public assistance agencies have declined by 79 percent since initial implementation of the law, from over 2.5 million registrations in 1995-1996 to only 540,000 in 2005-2006. This decline occurred despite the fact that average caseloads for programs such as Food Stamps have increased during this time and 13 million low-income citizens remained unregistered in 2006. Furthermore, recent field investigations and surveys of clients outside public assistance agencies on over a half-dozen states found numerous instances where voter registration was not being offered as required by the NVRA. At the same time, there remains a striking income gap in registration rates between the rich and the poor: In 2006, only 60 percent of citizens in households making less than $25,000 a year were registered to vote compared to 80 percent of those in households making over $100,000.

Fortunately, experience indicates that when state election and public assistance officials take steps to improve their Section 7 voter registration programs, the number of low-income citizens registering to vote in these offices increases dramatically. For example, after working with Demos and our partners, North Carolina’s State Board of Elections advised agencies of their responsibilities, identified NVRA coordinators in each agency office, enhanced the training program, and instituted a system for tracking and monitoring agency compliance. As a result, public assistance agencies experienced a five-fold increase in the average number of clients completing voter applications each month — from 484 to 2,529. Between January and August 2007, the state’s agencies registered over 20,000 low-income citizens — more than these agencies registered in the preceding two years combined. States such as Iowa and Tennessee have also seen tremendous gains in agency registrations after improving their procedures.

State election and public assistance officials are encouraged to follow the lead of North Carolina and Iowa and voluntarily commit to adopting “best practices� in agency registration to being them into compliance with the law.

For states that refuse to implement the law, litigation is the only option to secure compliance. Demos and our partners are currently involved in litigation against state officials in Ohio over their compliance with the law and four other states — Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and New Mexico — have received 90-day notice letters, the first step in the litigation process.
In addition to legal actions by private individuals or groups, the NVRA also provides the Department of Justice with authority to enforce the law through litigation. Indeed, the Department of Justice was an active participant in enforcing the law in the early 1990s. More recently, however, the Department has largely ignored violations of the law despite being repeatedly presented with evidence by Demos and other advocates as well as members of Congress.

Members of Congress are in a unique position to encourage improvements in their states and to hold the Department of Justice responsible for its lax enforcement of the law. Demos calls on the Congress to hold oversight hearings on the Department’s failure to enforce the law. Oversight hearings held last fall led to the Department making an initial attempt at enforcement. It is essential that Congress continue exercising their oversight role to ensure that the Department actively investigates Section 7 non-compliance and holds states accountable for their failures to implement the law.

Full implementation of the NVRA is a proven and effective way to ensure low-income citizens are able to register to vote. Thirteen years after it was first to be implemented, the time has come to realize the full promise of the National Voter Registration Act.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Politics, Civil Rights .