Protect Registration Drives

As a response to successful efforts by non-partisan and progressive organizations to register hundreds of thousands of new voters in recent years, many states are enacting restrictions on voter registration drives.These laws have a discriminatory effect as African Americans and members of Spanish-speaking households are twice as likely to be registered through a voter registration drive than whites or members of English-speaking households.

• In Florida, strict deadlines have been established, mandating that completed registration forms must be delivered to election officials within days of being filled out.  Failure to comply with the deadlines makes a person liable for heavy fines.  This recently led the League of Women Voters of Florida to briefly suspend voter registration activities.  The law is currently not being enforced while a lawsuit between the League and the state is resolved.
• In Ohio, voting rights groups won a lawsuit that struck down voter registration provisions that required “registration drive workers to register and to undergo training, to list detailed information on each registration form they help with and for every gatherer to turn in forms in person, not through an organizer…" 

Project Vote – Policy Brief on Restricting Voter Registration Drives