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Representing 10 residents who do not meet the requirements to get photo ID, the Pennsylvania ACLU and other groups have filed a complaint in state court seeking to block the state’s new ID measure. Plaintiffs contend the new rule violates the state’s Constitution “by depriving citizens of their most fundamental constitutional right — the right to vote.”
“Wartime welder, civil-rights marcher, world traveler, voter — Viviette Applewhite of Philadelphia's Germantown section can boast of having been all those things,” wrote The Philadelphia Inquirer, in a profile of one of the voters. “On Tuesday, she added another title: plaintiff.”
Applewhite, who is 92 and uses a wheelchair, does not have a driver’s license. She lost the rest of her ID when her purse was stolen years ago. So far, state officials have been unable to find her birth certificate, Applewhite said.
The Connecticut Senate approved a bill to allow voters to register and cast a ballot on Election Day, a big victory for voting rights advocates. Gov. Dan Malloy said he will sign the measure, which has helped many states improve voter turnout. The bill, passed by the House last week, will also allow online registration starting in 2014 and give current voters a better opportunity to correct errors in their registration status. The Brennan Center pushed this bill for months, writing an op-ed for The Connecticut Mirror. “These new reforms are a big step forward for Connecticut's voting system,” argued Myrna Pérez and Nic Riley.
Although the wave of new suppressive voting laws is starting to meet resistance from the both the courts and the public, the best way to end the struggle is to modernize voter registration. Today’s system dates from the 19th century and is cumbersome, expensive and error-prone. Advocating for a 21st century registration system in The New York Times, Brennan Center president Michael Waldman wrote, “Voter registration modernization could unite the combatants in the ‘voting wars.’” He added: “Yes, we should repel the push to make voting harder for millions of Americans. But if lawmakers really want to protect the integrity of our elections, modernizing our registration system is the answer.” Read the Brennan Center’s modernization proposal.
State Updates
Arizona – The state is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court the Ninth Circuit’s recent ruling striking down Arizona’s proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration.
Colorado – The state Senate gave initial approval “to a bill that would require mail ballots be sent to about 135,000 inactive voters for the 2012 election.”
Connecticut – The state Senate gave final approval to an election-day registration bill. Read more here. The Connecticut Post applauded the measure, saying the state is on “the right path on voter rights.” Read the Brennan Center's op-ed supporting the measure.
Florida – The Secretary of State’s office says it is prepared to use two sets of election laws for the Aug. 14th primary. Recent changes will be in effect in all but five counties, which must get approval from the federal government before implementing the new law.
Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Scott “appeared genuinely surprised” about the implications of restrictive voting laws he signed in a meeting with The Florida Times-Union editorial board. For instance, the new law eliminates voting the Sunday before an election. The bill passed along partisan lines, with Democrats objecting that the measure would make it harder for African Americans and Hispanics to cast ballots. “I didn’t know that was an issue,” Scott said. “No one brought that issue up to me.”
The Orlando Sentinel wrote how new voter registration laws are making it harder to enlist new voters. Elections officials are also part of the fallout. “One of the biggest challenges was that most of the law went into effect upon enactment, unlike previous years when there was a delay between enactment and the effective date,” the president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections told electionline Weekly.
Indiana – Two men, including a town mayor, were charged with election law violations dealing with absentee ballots. Both say they are innocent.
Kansas – The state House passed a bill "that would institute new proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration within the next six weeks rather than next year, matching the desires of Secretary of State Kris Kobach."
Michigan – The student paper at Michigan State University reported that new voter registration restrictions “could make it significantly harder for campus organizations to register voters.”
Minnesota – In November, Minnesota voters will have a referendum on an amendment to the state Constitution to tighten voting laws. Mike Dean, executive director of Common Cause Minnesota, explained his view of “what is actually lurking” in the amendment. Among other things, he argues the measure will effectively end Election Day registration because those voters will cast provisional ballots, many of which are never counted. Read about the arduous experience of getting an appropriate photo ID for a 92-year-old voter.
Mississippi – The House passed a bill to implement the state’s voter ID law, which passed by referendum last year. It awaits the signature of Gov. Phil Bryant.
Missouri – A House committee approved a bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. Opponents say it “has the potential to disenfranchise naturalized citizens,” who may not have the required documents.
New Hampshire – Charles Balban, president of the New Hampshire Alliance for Retired Americans wrote an op-ed opposing a proposed voter ID law, saying it “doesn't include information about the real cost of such a radical change to our centuries-old voting traditions.” A House committee is considering the bill.
North Carolina – Pat McCrory, a candidate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, is asking voters to bring photo IDs with them to the polls during the May 8th primary. The effort is designed to show support for a voter ID bill vetoed by Gov. Bev Perdue last year. Legislators who support the bill are trying to override the veto.
Ohio – Republicans and Democrats are close to a deal that would repeal a controversial election law and restore early voting for the three days before the election. The Cleveland Plain Dealer urged lawmakers to repeal the law to “avoid a divisive referendum question this fall” and help voters avoid confusion at the polls. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (Illinois) held a congressional field hearing on the law.
Pennsylvania – As detailed above, the ACLU is challenging the state’s new voter ID law, representing 10 citizens who lack the documentation required to obtain a photo ID. Read more about the plaintiffs here and here, and see videos of their stories here. The Brennan Center’s Keesha Gaskins spoke to The Philadelphia Inquirer about the voter ID law, which reported that there have been no convictions for voter impersonation or voter fraud for the past five years. The Inquirer also wrote editorials praising voters who protested the law during the recent primary, and detailing how the law will penalize seniors. Read more here, here, and here.
South Carolina – Activists held a rally to protest the state’s voter ID law, now under review by a federal court. Read more on the lawsuit here and here.
Texas – The federal district court considering Texas’ voter ID law said “the law will probably not be in place by the November general election unless the state turns over requested documents by Wednesday.” Read more here. The Justice Department has asked for a delay in the trial over the law, saying the state attorney general is stalling requests for information. Read more here and here.
Virginia – Gov. Bob McDonnell is still deciding if he will sign a voter ID bill into law. The Washington Post and the Virginian-Pilot have called on the governor to veto the measure. McDonnell has three options: he can sign the bill, veto it, or let the measure become law without his signature.
Wisconsin – It’s official— there will be no voter ID for the June 5 recall election of Gov. Scott Walker. An appeals court judge said there was “no realistic possibility” the case could be decided in time.
Policy Matters Ohio has published a report estimating that a proposed voter ID requirement would cost the state $5 to $7 million annually. “Ohioans value the right to vote and they value their neighbors’ participation. If there is a problem with voting in Ohio, it is that existing barriers keep too many from exercising this basic right. Creating new, unnecessary costs and suppressing votes has no place in the Buckeye State,” the report said. Read the full report.
Media Round-Up
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Brennan Center President Michael Waldman detailed how suppressive voting laws have met resistance at the polls and in the courts, and called for bipartisan reforms to our ramshackle registration system.
Washington Post columnist Katrina vanden Heuvel made a similar push for universal voter registration. “Universal registration would truly be, as Brennan Center president Michael Waldman has said, ‘potentially the most significant improvement since the Voting Rights Act of 1965,’” she wrote.
Another Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, wrote about voter ID laws. He detailed an investigation of charges that “dead people” had voted in South Carolina. The result? “[T]he commission found no evidence of fraud. Or zombies.” He also cited the Center’s research on voting law changes.
La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the U.S., editorialized: “Voter ID Laws Suppress Minority Votes.” Read the Spanish version here.
At CNN.com, Roland Martin said that voter suppression is real and must be stopped.
The Brennan Center’s Myrna Pérez and Lee Rowland explained the importance of the Democracy Restoration Act, a bill that would restore voting rights to millions of people with past criminal convictions. Read more on the effort at TPM.
The Obama campaign is preparing to help voters navigate new restrictions — such as voter ID and registration rules — in key swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Now that voter ID laws have passed in many states, Demos’ Tova Wang encouraged advocates to help educate voters on how to get ID.
Today, the Pew Center on the States released a report detailing some of the serious flaws in our voter registration systems, the lynchpin of election administration. Their study reaffirms what election administrators and voter advocates have known for a long time — that the voter rolls are filled with errors, and an unconscionable percentage (almost a quarter, according to Pew) of American citizens who are eligible to vote are not registered.
The flaws identified in the Pew study are the result of an outdated, paper- based voter registration system that is not only inefficient and costly, but prone to inaccuracy. Worse, the clunky system leaves off millions of eligible voters or contains errors in their records that could prevent them from voting effectively. The question is no longer whether we should upgrade the system, but how we should do so. Recent technological innovations point the way to the solution: modernizing the system.
The Brennan Center’s voter registration modernization proposal would address all the problems identified by the Pew study. Our plan includes automated registration of eligible voters at other governmental agencies (automatically transferring the records of consenting citizens to election authorities), online registration and access (enabling citizens to register to vote or check and update their registration online), permanent state registration (ensuring that a voter’s registration record moves with her when she moves within a state), and an Election Day failsafe to correct any errors and omissions. Experiences in the states demonstrate that our plan increases accuracy and registration rates, saves money, and minimizes the potential for fraud. The Brennan Center has developed a model state bill, and numerous states have already adopted components of voter registration modernization.
Voter registration is the first step to voting, the most important civic duty that Americans have. It is simply unacceptable for our modern democracy to rely on an incomplete, outdated, inaccurate, and expensive voter registration system like that used in many parts of the country. We should be a model of election administration, not lagging behind other democracies.
To be clear, Pew’s findings do not justify the restrictive voting policies we see being passed in some states. It is not easy or strategic to impersonate someone at the polls. Rather than erecting barriers between eligible American citizens and their right to vote, we should be opening pathways to a modern voting system.
Voter registration modernization is essential to help bring election administration into the 21st century, and states should take advantage of all opportunities, including the Pew technology, to move closer to voter registration modernization.
This week, Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera signed a bill into law that automatically registers its citizens to vote, which is expected to add 4.5 million people to Chile’s registration rolls. In doing so, the country joins many other democratic nations, including Australia, Canada, and France, that already have some form of automatic registration in place.
Unfortunately, the United States, where 35 percent of citizens — about 73.5 million — who are eligible to vote are not registered, does not have this policy in place. With such low registration rates, it is hard to imagine that in the last few years multiple laws have been approved across the country to restrict the ability of people to vote. In many states, there are even new burdens being placed specifically on the ability of community groups to register voters. One of the most onerous laws that passed was in Florida, and those restrictions are so severe that the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote had to suspend their voter registration drives.
Voting is not only a right, but a fundamental part of building an engaged citizenry and the foundation for civic participation. The Brennan Center advocates for a number of ways to modernize our country’s voter registration process that would be helpful to states to facilitate widespread registration. These provisions of voter registration modernization include automated registration (or automatically registering eligible citizens based on lists from other governmental agencies), online registration and access (being able to register to vote; or check, and edit one’s registration online), and permanent state registration (a voter’s registration record is moved as needed among jurisdictions within the state, but the voter is kept on the voter rolls as long as she resides in the state). All of these measures would effectively and efficiently improve voter registration, and enable more Americans to vote.
In addition to making our democracy more inclusive, voter registration modernization could make voting rolls more clean and accurate. The key is in sharing and comparing information between government agencies while moving away from the antiquated paper-based system on which most states rely. In too many states, a form has to get mailed to the county election office where it is hard-entered into the state voter registration database. This paper based system is not only labor intensive, but also error prone, and can lead to numerous problems in the electoral process. These systems are also incredibly costly at a time when money is particularly tight in the states. Moving to a paperless system can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In Maricopa County, Arizona, they saved $450,000 by switching to online registration and partial automation, and in Delaware, they saved $200,000 just on personnel costs. Voter registration modernization has also gained bipartisan support around the country, as it is an area in which both parties can come together in the common goal of efficiency and cost reduction.
By following in the footsteps of many of the world’s developed democracies, Chile took an essential step toward modernizing its voter registration system. As a first-rate democracy the United States should do no less.
Last Thursday morning, I had the opportunity to testify in Congress before a hearing of the Committee on House Administration on the 2010 elections. While a lot went right from the perspective of voting rights and election administration, 2010 provided plenty of examples of how even now, a decade after “hanging chad” became a household term and states all over the country began purchasing new, modern voting machines, we are still struggling to bring the way we run our elections into the 21st century.
In particular, the 2010 elections showed the continuing and critical need to (1) modernize our country's voter registration system and (2) create an accessible, national database and reporting system to track voting system malfunctions.
Modernizing the Nation's Antiquated Registration System
The 2010 election demonstrated, yet again, that our voter registration system needs an upgrade. Developed in the early 19th century and still based largely on paper, the current system in most of the country is costly, inefficient and unreliable. The system overwhelms election officials with burdensome and needless paperwork, and it prevents many American citizens from exercising their right to vote.
At least three data points from the 2010 election point to the continuing need to modernize the country’s voter registration system:
Election Protection, the nation’s largest nonpartisan voter protection effort, said voter registration issues were their #1 most reported problem in 2010. 24% of their voter hotline’s call volume had to do with voter registration problems.
Election officials, too, voiced commonly heard frustrations. In the coming months, the Brennan Center will release an analysis of post-election reports from election officials across the United States. Our preliminary research reveals that officials experienced the same yearly headaches with the current paper-based voter registration system, from inaccurate registrations to a last minute flood of registration forms.
The 2010 election saw dramatically lower voter registration rates compared to the last midterm election. Almost every jurisdiction with available data showed dramatic drops in new voter registrations.
The solution is voter registration modernization, which offers opportunities to make registering to vote easier, faster, more reliable, and more secure, all while saving election officials’ time and taxpayers’ money.
The key components of a fully modernized voter registration system are:
Automated Registration. Under an automated registration system, states automatically register eligible, consenting citizens, including newly eligible citizens, when they interact with government agencies like the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Permanent or Portable Registration. Under permanent registration, once a voter is on a state's voter rolls, they will remain registered and able to vote at the polling place associated with their address so long as they continue to reside in that state. Permanent registration can be accomplished by automatic registration record updates and procedures allowing voters to update their records before and on Election Day.
Election Day Correction. Under an Election Day correction process, citizens can correct errors and omissions on the voter rolls before and on Election Day.
Online Registration. Online registration provides another critical safeguard to ensure accurate voter rolls.
A Brennan Center report on steps some states have already taken towards modernization found three main benefits:
Increased Registration Rates. Registration rates at DMVs doubled in Washington and Kansas, and increased seven-fold in South Dakota after the states automated the voter registration system at DMVs.
More Accurate and Secure Rolls. A 2009 survey of incomplete and incorrect registrations in Maricopa County, Arizona found that electronic voter registrations up to five times less error-prone than their paper-based counterparts.
Substantial Savings to Taxpayers. Upgrades to the voter registration system are surprisingly inexpensive to implement, ranging from no additional cost to several hundred thousand dollars. These small initial investments yield enormous annual savings.
Online and automated DMV registrations saved Maricopa County, Arizona over $450,000 in 2008. The county spends 33¢ to manually process an electronic application, and an average of 3¢ using a partially automated review process, compared to 83¢ for a paper registration form.
Delaware’s paperless voter registration at DMVs saves election officials more than $200,000 every year on personnel costs, over and above the savings they reaped by partially automating the process in the mid-1990s.
Creating a National Database to Reduce Voting System Malfunctions
When it comes to system failures voting machines are different from cars, appliances, and many other products in at least one important respect: for the vast majority of voting systems in use today, (1) manufacturers are not required to report malfunctions to any government agency, and (2) there is no agency that either investigates such alleged failures or alerts election officials and the general public to possible problems (let alone requires voting system manufacturers to fix such problems).
Too often in the past this has meant that voting systems fail in a particular county in one election, and then again later under similar circumstances, in another locale and election. These repeated failures disenfranchise voters and damage public confidence in the electoral system.
For a 2010 report, the Brennan Center closely studied fourteen cases of voting machine failures. Most of the election officials we interviewed in connection with these case studies claimed to have had no prior warning of the problems that were eventually identified, and yet in most cases, the vendors were (or should have been) aware of the problems – often because the same problem had been reported to them earlier by another election official.
The solution is a national database of voting system problems.
Given the nature and importance of voting systems to our democracy, we need a new national system to ensure that voting system defects are caught early, disclosed immediately, and corrected quickly and comprehensively. The system must include four key elements to work effectively:
A Publicly Available, Searchable, Centralized Database. Election officials, in particular, would benefit from a publicly available, searchable online database that includes official as well as voter-reported data regarding voting system failures and vulnerabilities
Vendor Reporting Requirements. Vendors must be required to notify the appropriate government agency of any known and suspected voting system failures and vulnerabilities, and other reported problems, including customer complaints and warranty claims.
A Federal Agency with Investigatory Powers. The best way to ensure that vendors address potential problems in a timely manner is to empower the appropriate government agency to investigate all voting system failures and vulnerabilities listed on the database.
Enforcement Mechanisms. The appropriate government agency must have the power to levy civil penalties on vendors who fail to meet the reporting requirement or to remedy failures or vulnerabilities with their voting systems.
We should applaud election officials for their successful efforts in 2010. Under serious budget constraints and vast changes, they oversaw another successful national election. Modernizing our antiquated registration system and establish a national database of voting machine problems would significantly ease the burden we place on them, and make it easier to ensure that every eligible voter is able to vote and have their vote accurately counted.
Encouraging news out of Maryland: the Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) has announced that it intends to automate the voter registration system at MVA offices.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about Maryland’s failings when registering voters at MVA offices. Twenty-five percent of citizens who attempted to register to vote at MVA offices in Maryland in the past four years were not added to the voting rolls, The Baltimore Sun reported. TheSun also reported that during that period, 120,000 citizens who submitted change-of-address information at the MVA did not have their voting records updated. And alarmingly, The Sun noted that officials at the Maryland State Board of Elections estimate that about 622,165 Maryland residents who are qualified to vote are not registered to do so.
The MVA conceded that their registration process “could be improved,” and paid a visit to Delaware, which boasts one of the most effective electronic motor voter systems in the nation, known as “e-Signature.” Eligible motorists at Delaware motor vehicle offices (DMVs) fill out and sign registration forms on a touch pad, and the information is electronically submitted to election officials. By improving its electronic voter registration system at DMVs, the state saved over $200,000 a year from its election budget. Maryland officials, who once said the process of automation would not be feasible, “concluded that it would be relatively painless for Maryland to copy” the Delaware system, said The Sun.
Now, Delaware is planning to automate voter registration at public service agencies. The new process will be modeled completely after e-Signature, says State Election Commissioner Elaine Manlove. Delaware’s public service agencies do an annual intake, and clients will be asked to register to vote during the process.
When asked about why Delaware decided to further modernize its registration system, Commissioner Manlove said that the Department of Health and Social Services had approached her about implementing e-Signature at their offices, and that it “just seemed like the next logical step.” The program will be implemented one site at a time over the next few weeks and reaction has been positive so far. “When Health and Social Services came to us to ask when they could get e-sig, I knew we were on the right track!” said Commissioner Manlove.
Here’s some great news out of Nevada, where the Brennan Center has been working with the Chairman of the State Assembly’s Elections Committee to assist with the drafting of one bill and with amendments to a second. The two bills, together, would make Nevada a national leader on voting rights and voter registration.
Nevada’s voter registration system is still essentially paper-based. This makes the maintenance of basic voter registration records extra-costly and extra error-prone – a bad combination. Inaccurate, outdated registration rolls pose problems for election authorities, increasing the cost of election administration and voter mailings, making it difficult to properly plan for elections, and rousing fears of possible fraud.
An amended version of Nevada Assembly Bill 108 which will be introduced later today will propose to solve this problem by updating the voter registration system. The amended version of Bill 108 will propose full voter registration modernization, and would provide for:
One-stop automated voter registration available for eligible citizens when they interact with a range of government agencies
Portable voter registration, so that Nevada voters stay registered even if they move within the state. This is particularly important in a state like Nevada – according to the Census’ 2006 American Community Survey, nearly 400,000 Nevadans moved within the state in just a year – about 16% of the state’s population at the time of the estimate. Now, post-foreclosure crisis, that number is probably even larger.
A statewide onlinevoter interface where Nevadans can register to vote and find polling place information.
Election Dayregistration, to ensure that every eligible Nevadan may register and vote on Election Day.
This combination of modern voter registration systems and policies would ultimately make election administration easier and help as many eligible citizens vote as possible. It would also be a good call for Nevada’s taxpayers – states that have adopted modernized registration have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on election administration, with savings likely to run into the millions after just a few years of implementation. Among the cost statistics that the Brennan Center has collected:
It cost Arizona less than $130,000 and Washington just $279,000 to implement both online voter registration and automated voter registration at DMVs.
Delaware’s paperless voter registration at Department of Motor Vehicles offices saves election officials more than $200,000 annually on personnel costs, above the savings reaped by partially automating the process in the mid-1990s. Officials anticipate further savings.
Online and automated DMV registrations saved Maricopa County, Arizona over $450,000 in 2008. The county spends 33¢ to manually process an electronic application, and an average of 3¢ using a partially automated review process, compared to 83¢ for a paper registration form.
The version of Bill 108 that will be introduced this afternoon would give Nevada’s voters the 21st-century voter registration system they deserve.
Meanwhile, Nevada’s patchwork of laws and policies concerning the restoration of voting rights for people with past criminal convictions needs work, too. Nevada has become one of the most restrictive states in the Union when it comes to restoring the right to vote to those who have served their time, and the rules for recovering voting rights in Nevada are so complicated and variable, often neither the voter registration agency nor the voter himself knows when or how to reclaim this basic right of citizenship, according to this study from the ACLU of Nevada.
Nevada Assembly Bill 301 would make the rules for Nevadans who have served their time consistent, restoring voting rights upon completion of felony sentences of prison, probation, or parole, and notifying citizens of their right to vote when they become eligible.
These two bills give Nevada dual opportunities to both be a leader on voting rights and to make a thoughtful investment in a long-term cost-saver for taxpayers. As the Nevada legislature considers these bills this week, let’s hope legislators keep them moving in the right direction!
Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White was indicted on seven felony counts on Thursday, including charges of voter fraud. According to special prosecutors, Secretary White intentionally voted in the wrong precinct in the May 2010 primary. Secretary White admitted to the charge, but has said it was not on purpose.
Here is how it apparently all went down: after his 2007 divorce, Secretary White moved from the house he shared with his ex-wife. He moved into an apartment in the same precinct and updated his voter registration record. Around February 2009, he moved out of that apartment and back in with his wife. Later that year in November, Secretary White began to split time between his ex-wife’s house and a recently purchased condo outside the precinct. In February 2010, he changed his voter registration record to reflect his ex-wife’s address as he had not yet closed on his condo and was unsure when he would. Secretary White subsequently failed to update his voter registration record to reflect his own address and voted in the wrong district.
Secretary White blamed a hectic schedule for not updating his registration. Moving (coupled with running for state office, in this specific case) is indeed a stressful time, and many movers, unable to update their registration records in time to vote, are ultimately disenfranchised. In 2008-2009, over 36 million people moved in the United States, and a study by Harvard and Yale universities revealed that our registration system is failing these mobile voters. According to the survey, 12 percent of Florida voters and nearly 10 percent of Los Angeles County voters surveyed reported at least one significant error—such as name, birth date or address—in their record that could prevent them from casting a ballot.
If address changes were automated, permanent, and portable, eligible movers would have their voting records updated automatically, and not face rejection from the ballot box come Election Day. In Secretary White’s case, he would not have had to remember to change his address in the busy period between sale closing and the election. But, alas, Indiana has not modernized its voter registration system.
Twenty-five percent of citizens who attempted to register to vote at Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) offices in Maryland in the past four years were not properly added to the voting rolls, the Baltimore Sun reported last week. During that period, 120,000 citizens who submitted change-of-address information at the MVA did not have their voting records updated. And alarmingly, officials at the Maryland State Board of Elections told the Sun that about 622,165 Maryland residents who are qualified to vote are not registered to do so.
Such obvious failures to register voters violate the letter and spirit of federal law. The National Voter Registration Act (also known as the "Motor Voter law"), among its many provisions, requires that states offer voter registration opportunities to eligible citizens who apply for driver’s licenses or come in to update their information at licensing agencies.
Rather than working toward more effective compliance with federal law, officials at the MVA have tried to justify their failures by pointing fingers at the poorly served voters themselves. As the Sun reports, the MVA blamed motorists, who they say often tell clerks that they want to register to vote, but then fail to follow through by signing and returning the necessary forms. Never mind the fact that federal law requires the state to update voter records based on change of address information submitted to the MVA regardless of whether the voter signs or submits any form.
What the MVA should rightfully blame is its outdated paper-based voter registration system. As Brennan Center research has demonstrated, labor-intensive paper-based voter registration systems swamp election officials, burden taxpayers, and create a risk for every voter that human error—a misplaced form, a data entry slip, and failure to properly complete a form—will bar her access to the ballot box.
Rather than displacing the fault on voters, Maryland should use this opportunity to achieve productive change and automate its voter registration system at the MVA. As we detail in our report, Voter Registration in a Digital Age, many states have already automated their registration systems at motor vehicle offices. Paperless registration in these states has proven to be cost-effective, more accurate, and increase registration rates.
It seems Maryland considered modernizing its registration systems three years ago, when a Senate committee conceded that the MVA voter registration process “does not function as effectively as it should.” The Sun reports that, “the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee asked the MVA and the elections board to consider moving to a fully electronic system in which clerks would guide would-be voters through the registration process.”
In response, “the MVA reported back that such a change was ‘not feasible,’ because it would require the agency to hire more workers and add ’substantial wait times’ at MVA offices.” The MVA also claimed that a new system would cost millions. The MVA is wrong on both counts. Again, the experience of 17 states shows that automation is eminently feasible. Neighboring Delaware is proof of this. The state boasts one of the most effective electronic motor voter systems in the nation, known as e-Signature. Motorists fill out and sign registration forms on a touch pad, and the information is electronically submitted to election officials.
The entire system cost Delaware $600,000, not millions of dollars as Maryland fears, and has saved over $200,000 per year, according to Elaine Manlove, Delaware’s State Election Commissioner. The program has been so successful that Delaware is set to introduce e-Signature into the offices of social service agencies in the coming weeks, which will make it the first state in the country to do so. Other states have automated their systems at far lower costs: Washington spent $280,000 and Arizona spent $30,000.
Maryland’s MVA officials should have a conversation with their neighbors in Delaware to discuss ways to remedy its flawed registration system, as the Baltimore Sun, the NAACP, and the former chief of the U.S. Justice Department’s Voting Section have all urged. The Brennan Center is also available for technical support. For more information on voter registration modernization, please click here.
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