[EL] Fwd: Project Vote and Partners Sue Georgia for Neglecting Low-Income Residents

[Doug Hess]

For those that didn't already hear about the new NVRA lawsuit, see below.

The NVRA will be twenty years old in 18 months. It would be nice if it was
fully functioning in all states by then. The EAC's most recent NVRA report
to Congress should come out sometime this month. Hopefully, it will
address non-compliance with the Act .

Doug

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Slater <mslater at projectvote.org>
Date: Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 2:30 PM
Subject: Project Vote and Partners Sue Georgia for Neglecting Low-Income
Residents
To: douglasrhess at gmail.com


 Dear Colleagues,

Today a coalition of voting rights groups—including Project Vote, Demos, the
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU), the NAACP, and the law firm of Dechert LLP—filed a lawsuit
against the State of Georgia to compel officials in that state to enforce
the public agency provisions of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

“The State of Georgia has been ignoring its responsibilities under the NVRA
for too many years,” said Nicole Zeitler, director of the Public Agency
Voter Registration program at Project
Vote<http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=CzdOcqzJQrZVUCZCpfKXNnXRb3U7IJsr>,
in a press release<http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=LKmeTWveqokyKJy9UVK3pXXRb3U7IJsr>on
the case today. “The result is that thousands of low-income Georgians
have been denied the opportunity to register to vote.”

To read the complaint, go
here<http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=BKWRtiWH6oGAzgEwKRl%2Botmr9MJqo7wD>.


The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP
(Georgia NAACP) and the Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda (Peoples’ Agenda).
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and Commissioner of the Georgia
Department of Human Services (DHS) Clyde J. Reese III are named as
defendants in the Complaint, which asks the court to ensure that all
necessary steps are taken to remedy the state’s failure to provide voter
registration services at state public assistance offices.

As you know, Section 7 of the NVRA requires that all public assistance
offices in Georgia distribute a voter registration application each time a
client applies for benefits, recertifies, or fills out a change of address
form. According to the Complaint filed today in federal district court in
Atlanta, there has been a dramatic decline in the number of persons
registering to vote at Georgia public assistance offices since the NVRA
first took effect in the mid-1990s. During the 1995-1996 reporting period,
DHS received more than 100,000 registration applications, but in 2010 the
number of registrations had dropped to a mere 4,430. By comparison, in 2009,
Georgia, on average, received nearly 70,000 applications each month for SNAP
(formerly the food stamps program), which is just one of the public
assistance programs covered by the NVRA’s voter registration requirements.
Recent surveys of public assistance clients conducted at selected public
assistance offices in Georgia provide further evidence of the lack of
compliance.

This lawsuit continues the strategy that Project Vote and our allies have
applied so successfully in other states. For example, voter registration
applications from Missouri public assistance agencies skyrocketed, from
fewer than 8,000 a year to over 130,000 a year, following settlement of a
suit in that state in 2008. More than 200,000 low-income Ohioans have
applied to register since a similar case was settled there at the end of
2009. Settlements also recently have been reached in New Mexico and Indiana,
and a similar lawsuit was filed in Louisiana in April of this year.

Project Vote is proud to be part of this effort to bring Georgia into
compliance with this vital law, and we hope to send a clear message to other
non-complying states that they don’t need to wait to be sued to do right by
their low-income residents. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.


Regards,


Michael Slater
Executive Director











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