Advocacy Groups File Suit over Violations of Voter Registration Law

A coalition of voting rights groups has filed lawsuits against two states, Indiana and New Mexico, for failing to adequately implement a section of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), commonly known as the Motor Voter law. The groups charge that the states' public assistance agencies and motor vehicle offices have not met their responsibilities to offer residents the opportunity to register to vote.

According to Project Vote [1], "full implementation of this law could improve lagging voter registration rates among low-income citizens by two to three million new voters per year nationwide."

Section 7 of the NVRA requires that all state offices that provide public assistance programs, including Food Stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Medicaid, and offices providing services to persons with disabilities distribute voter registration application forms. The offices are also required to assist applicants in completing the forms and sending the applications to the appropriate state election officials.

In New Mexico, the lawsuit [2] was filed on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and four New Mexico residents who were not offered the opportunity to register to vote when they went to a state agency.

In Indiana, the complaint [3] was filed on behalf of ACORN, the Indiana State Conference of the NAACP, and Paris Alexander, an Indiana resident and Food Stamp program client who was not provided the opportunity to register to vote.

The Indiana suit details that registration applications from the Family and Social Services Administration offices have declined, despite an increase in participation in the Food Stamp program. And according to the New Mexico complaint, Project Vote conducted a study of 74 New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division offices in March 2009 and found that 80 percent are not in compliance with the law.

According to the coalition of advocacy groups, New Mexico and Indiana are not exceptional cases; they allege that states across the country are violating the Motor Voter law. A Demos fact sheet [4] reports, "Registrations from public assistance agencies nationwide has declined almost 80 percent in the 10 years after initial implementation of the NVRA, from over 2.6 million registrations in 1995-1996 to only 540,000 in the most recent reporting period of 2005-2006."

Because state agencies are not doing their jobs, nonprofit organizations have to increase already stretched resources and help low-income residents with voter registration. According to Project Vote [1], "Compliance with the NVRA since its inception in 1993 has been spotty at best, non-existent at worst, leaving third-party groups with the hefty responsibility of picking up the slack by conducting expensive registration drives in disenfranchised communities."

To increase the number of registered voters, Demos, ACORN, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law have joined forces [5] and are working to improve states' compliance with the public assistance provisions of the NVRA through their National Voter Registration Act Implementation Project.

In the midst of this activity, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released a report [6] on the impact of the NVRA on the administration of elections during 2007 and 2008. The EAC report verifies the extent of the implementation of public agency registration and problems that have been reported. One of the recommendations of the EAC report was that departments of motor vehicles, public assistance offices, and disability agencies should be encouraged to remind voters to check and update their registrations.