Georgia State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Georgia People's Agenda filed a lawsuit against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and state Department of Human Resources Commissioner Clyde Reese for failing to provide voter registration forms to residents seeking public assistance, like food stamps and Medicaid. The suit claims Georgia has been engaging in statewide noncompliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) Section 7. It contends the state has deprived thousands of low-income Georgia citizens the opportunity to vote. In 2007-2008, Georgia public assistance offices received 21,762 voter registration applications a 79 percent drop since 1995-96 (Fleishman, 2004). Section 7 of the NVRA requires that all public assistance offices, in states subject to the NVRA, distribute a voter registration application with each application for public assistance, and each recertification, renewal, or change of address relating to an individual’s receipt of public assistance. It further mandates that all public assistance offices in a covered state assist clients in completing a voter registration application (unless a client declines such assistance), provide a form that asks clients whether they wish to register to vote and includes certain specified information concerning the voter registration process, and accept completed voter registration forms for delivery to the appropriate elections authority. Defendant Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State and “chief elections official,” is responsible for ensuring Georgia’s compliance with the NVRA, including Section 7, and did not fulfilled his responsibilities for ensuring that Georgia provides the voter registration services mandated by the NVRA to its public assistance clients. Defendant Clyde L. Reese, III, Commissioner of DHS, the state agency responsible for administration of public assistance programs in Georgia, also had failed to ensure implementation of policies and procedures to make voter registration available through agency offices, as mandated by Section 7. To see numbers increase and make certain compliance of Section 7 in its agency centered voter registration, management can take several steps such as forming a NVRA Improvement Team with a Delegated Chair, selecting Local Coordinators, Sending Immediate Instruction to Agency/Office Personnel, and Training & Performance analyses of staff to name a few (2008, Demos). The forming of an Improvement Team with an official such as the Secretary of State who can gather the needed personnel to safeguard an actual agency based registration program. The Improvement Team should meet and consult on a regular basis on developing and coordinating enhanced NVRA procedures and monitor systematic reporting from agency sites regarding NVRA performance. Each office should have a designated NVRA Coordinator to ensure accountability and coordination at each local office that provides voter registration services. Coordinators have the responsibility to put into operation voter registration procedures in his or her local office. As Coordinator one makes certain that the local office has a sufficient quantity of voter registration applications, trains frontline personnel on the topic of their responsibilities under the law, reports data on voter registration accomplishments to the relevant state-level official, forwards completed voter registrations to the applicable elections officials, and serves as the local office professional on voter registration. With a NVRA re-implementation project, the agency directors should send memos specifying the duties of staff for compliance with the NVRA to all offices covered by the NVRA. The memo should contain procedures for presenting voter registration, how registration supplies are to be ordered, how records are to be kept, how and to whom data are to be reported, and detailed instructions on when and to whom to send completed voter registration submissions. As well, the memo should also make clear that each local office must designate an NVRA Coordinator to be responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the voter registration program. Training of NVRA Coordinators and local frontline personnel is critical to guaranteeing effective (and actual) implementation of agency-based voter registration. First, existing NVRA written policies, procedural manuals, and/or training materials should be updated or amended for accuracy as necessary. Next, Coordinators should be trained by state officials in “train the trainer” programs. From this point, Coordinators should then educate all existing local agency personnel and certify that all new employees are trained on voter registration processes as part of their training. Revision training for agency personnel should be performed at least once per year. Effective conformity with voter registration procedures should be weighed as part of the systematic performance reviews that agency personnel receive. Congress sought to reduce registration barriers by mandating that states provide the opportunity to register to vote in several specific and different ways. Most important is that the law requires that public assistance agencies and offices that primarily serve the disable must provide voter registration services to ensure that low-income people and the disabled also have the opportunity to register to vote (Woodruff, 2011). The United States Department of Justice website offers a wealth of information. It contains an overview of what the National Voters Registration Act is as well as, what states are covered by the NVRA’s requirements. Management could also leverage information from “The North Carolina Experience”. In 2005-2006 an investigation was conducted of Section 7 compliance in North Carolina concluded that not a single person was offered voter registration services (Dantz, Novakowski, 2008). Federal authorities indicated that data submitted by North Carolina showed a 73.5 percent decline in public assistance voter registrations between 1995-1996 and 2003-2004 (Hess, Novakowski, 2007). After Gary Bartlett, the Executive Director of the State Board of Elections began to work with Demos a multi-issue national organization and their partners, North Carolina implemented a comprehensive compliance plan that accomplished dramatic increases in the numbers of clients completing voter registration applications at public assistance offices. The state of North Carolina chose to work with advocacy groups in order to stay in compliance with Section 7. Management should have taken the opportunity to do the same to save time, money and its reputation by either doing it the right way the first time or compiling with advocacy groups when the issue was first called to the attention.

Reference
Danetz, Lisa J. and Novakowski, Scott (2008), “Expanding Voter Registration for Low-Income Citizens: How North Carolina is Realizing the Promise of the National Voter Registration Act”

Fleischmann, A. M. (2004). Protecting poor people's right to vote: Fully implementing public assistance provisions of the national voter registration act. National Civic Review, 93(3), 66-69.

Hess, Douglas R. and Novakowski, Scott (2007), “Unequal Access: Neglecting the National Voter Registration Act, 1995-2006”

Woodruff, I. J. (2011). WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: THE POLLING PLACE, VOTER INTIMIDATION, AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT. University Of Louisville Law Review, 50(2), 253-285.

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Local Lawsuits
Stacy Y. Scott
Dr. Teddilane Turner Business Law I
July 29, 2012