Voting Rights in an Off Year
In this Wall Street Journal front page story from the voting rights campaign, Reporter Brody Mullins examined how Project Vote conducted voter registration assistance and why. We traveled with him to downtown Denver, where Sarah Massey took this photo that was later used by the Journal. What we found there was a small army of workers fanning out across the city to engage Americans who had never registered to vote. The work was tedious, hot, and tough. But why is it that voter registration is so hard?
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) mandates that voter registration information must be made available at offices that provide services to citizens, including your friendly Motor Vehicle administration offices. Thousands if not millions have made it onto the voter rolls this way. If you apply for welfare or for Medicare, the office should have voter registration vailable. It’s a small step that could make a big difference in the proportion of low-income and minority voters — if it were implemented.
Unfortunately, some states have been reluctant (at best) to implement this part of the NVRA. Lack of oversight and accountability, and the fact that many staff have never learned that they are required to provide the forms, have led Project Vote to issue advisories to many states. The organization made headlines early this summer when it had to sue New Mexico and Indiana to try and ensure that these states come into compliance with national law!
If the NVRA were fully implemented, Project Vote estimates that two or three million voters could be added to the rolls per year. These voters would be primarily minorities and low-income citizens, who often are not targeted in voter registration drives. These two groups are notoriously underrepresented in the electorate. The law exists to correct this imbalance, so that the electorate can more fully reflect the general population. Entrenched interests — and simple inertia — are working against implementation of the NVRA. This year, Project Vote will sue any state that fails to do their parts to register voters. Because even though our focus is away from voting, the spotlight will get turned on again next year. We want to make sure that every American who wants to vote can vote.
