Grow the Electorate

This week, the New Jersey legislature approved permanent absentee voting legislation [A 2451 by Rep. Joan Quigley and Sen. Raymond Lesniak] after minor reconciliation and scheduling delays kept the bill in a holding pattern for half a year.

Minnesota legislators passed a landmark voter registration modernization bill recently that would, absent a veto, have registered or updated the registration of voters automatically when they applied for a driver's license, learner's permit or ID card.  It would also use information in motor vehicle and corrections databases to verify and maintain voter rolls.  This legislation, sponsored by Rep. Steve Simon and Sen. John Marty, would have made Minnesota the first state in the nation to proactively register voters, and made it among the most advanced in maintaining clean, accurate voter rolls.  The bill was designed to build on the state's already first-in-the-nation portability bill, which requires automatic updates to voter registrations based on changes of address.

However, Governor Pawlenty vetoed this historic legislation last week...

In the final week of their legislative sessions, the Colorado and Indiana legislatures gave final approval to bills allowing residents to register to vote online.  Colorado Senators passed HB 1160 and Indiana House Members passed HB 1346; both bills allow residents with driver's licenses or state-issued ID cards to register to vote online.  The legislation has been sent to the governor in both states.  In Colorado the governor is expected to sign the bill, while Indiana's governor has not indicated support or opposition.

Until the last few election cycles almost all voters in a large majority of states had to go to the polls on election day to cast their ballots. During the last two presidential elections this has changed dramatically. Last November approximately 30% of voters cast their ballots early, either through the mail or in person. This marks a significant change in the way Americans vote and is forcing a similar shift in the way many campaigns get out their voters: most notably and successfully, in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama.

Today's Dispatch outlines the major policies that states are pursuing that are driving these changes, how they benefit voters and election administrators, and the GOTV opportunities for candidates where early voting is becoming the norm.

This week the US Supreme Court ruled on the scope of the minority vote dilution component (section 2) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). In doing so the court interpreted the VRA to only protect the voting power of minority groups when they constitute a majority of the electorate in a legislative district. This ruling makes the requirements of section 2 significantly narrower then the defendant in the case, the chief elections official for the state of North Carolina, had believed it to be.

The elections of 2008 served as a critical test of the nation's election systems.  With changes in voting machines and procedures, coupled with expectations of record voter turnout, election administrators held their breath and hoped their system wouldn't fail. 

While the system didn't fail, voters faced serious obstacles in exercising their right to vote.  Voter registration ended up being the problem that affected the largest number of voters.  Even before the first votes were cast, it was apparent that our voter registration systems were woefully inadequate.  While in other nations 90% or more of the eligible voter population is registered to vote, in the United States less than 75% of eligible voters are registered.

We can do better.

This year election administrators, many of whom were fielding new voting equipment for the first time, faced record turnout.  After the pervasive problems with the previous two presidential elections and the fears of more election problems, both real and imagined, voters across the political spectrum faced the election with deep skepticism about its fairness and integrity.  Today we give a brief overview of whether the expectations for the election were born out, and what election day tells us about where to focus reforms.

Fallout from Montana Voter Challenge Plan Continues:  Last week we highlighted the tremendous job that Forward Montana and other local advocates did in bringing a massive attempt to challenge voters in Montana to a stop.  In just a few days the plan was abandoned amid serious public backlash.  This week there has been additional fallout as the executive director of the state GOP has stepped down.  Clearly trying to keep people like deployed soldiers from voting wasn't a popular activity in the big sky state.

Voter purges, which became infamous in Florida in the 2000 election, seem to have become a consistent problem since then based on anecdotal evidence.  But few have looked across states to see how routine purges to “clean” the voter rolls of ineligible voters are actually carried out when they don’t make headlines.  The Brennan Center for Justice has investigated and what they report is troubling.  Their findings point to the critical need for vastly greater oversight, accountability and consistence in e

The biggest electoral dust-up this summer in Ohio has been the attempt to overturn Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s decision to allow voters to register and vote on the same day during a one week period from September 30th to October 6th.  This resulted from an overlap between the beginning of early voting and the end of voter registration, 30 days before the election.  The Ohio Republican Party, nervous that progressive groups planned to target get out the vote efforts during same day voting, sued in state court.  Their claim was that the practice would violate the state requirement that a person be registered 30 days before an election in order to vote.  The ACLU, in concert with a number of voting rights advocates, filed a counter-suit to enforce the Secretary of State’s decision in federal court.