Ten Years Later: A Promise Unfulfilled: The National Voter Registration Act in Public Assistance Agencies, 1995-2005

Throughout our country, state and municipal government offices offer public assistance to tens of millions of citizens, funded largely by the nation's taxpayers through the Federal government. These offices offer a range of essential services and opportunities for many of our most vulnerable citizens: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families provides subsidies for families' basic living expenses, Food Stamps allow families to purchase needed nutrition, Medicaid offers health care ranging from primary and preventive care to long-term care for the seriously ill or injured, and numerous other programs that enhance or supplement these.

While our nation's safety net is by no means complete, it does represent a substantial effort to offer our neediest citizens some of the resources necessary to participate in American society. Indeed, the role of public assistance offices in encouraging clients to strive toward self-sufficiency and full participation in the country's social and economic life has been given increased emphasis in recent years. However, these offices have neglected one significant aspect of our national life in which the participation of the poor lags behind that of other citizens.

Citizens in low-income households are less likely to participate in our nation's democracy by registering to vote and casting ballots than middle class or wealthy Americans. As it happens, public assistance agencies are required by federal law to take steps that would remedy this disparity by increasing voter registration among public assistance recipients. In an attempt to broadly reform the voter registration process, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), which went into effect in January 1995. Among other things, the NVRA mandated that state public assistance offices actively facilitate voter registration for all clients and applicants for services. If states had successfully complied with the law over the last decade, it is all but certain that poor citizens would be much more likely to register and vote than they are today.

During 2004 and 2005, Demos, Project Vote and ACORN reviewed states' efforts to comply with the NVRA's public assistance requirements and initiated an effort to improve implementation of that provision of the law. Our fieldwork and the nationwide data suggest that in nearly every state there has been a serious failure to incorporate voter registration into the services offered by public assistance agencies.

This report offers both a review of the as yet unfulfilled promise of the NVRA in public assistance agencies in the statute's first decade and a plan of action for recommitting ourselves to fulfilling the promise in the months and years ahead.