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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 24, 2007
CONTACT: Tim Rusch
Tel: (212) 389-1407 Email: trusch@demos.org
DEMOS RESPONDS TO REPORTS THAT THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE HAS SYSTEMATICALLY NEGLECTED ENFORCEMENT OF VOTING RIGHTS LAW
"SHIFTING PRIORITIES, PARTISANSHIP AT DOJ CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION ARE DETRIMENTAL TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
New York, NY--In response to news reports documenting how the Department of Justice has selectively enforced voting rights law for possible partisan gain, Miles Rapoport, President of Demos, a policy center on voting rights and election reform and former Secretary of the State of Connecticut, issued the following statement:
"Last week, alarming details were uncovered regarding the Department of Justice's approach to enforcing voting rights laws, particularly a provision of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 which requires social service agencies to offer registration opportunities to clients. Demos has long studied the waning enforcement of Section 7 of the NVRA. From 1995 to 1996, over 2.5 million people were registered through the NVRA. Ten years later, this number dropped 60 percent to slightly over 1 million, and a variety of national-and state-level surveys have found widespread non-compliance with NVRA's Section 7 requirements.
"Demos and others have repeatedly reached out to the Department of Justice to alert them to falling registration levels under NVRA, submitting letters citing research and best practices for implementation in 2004 and 2005 and also meeting with representatives from the Civil Rights Division, which is responsible for voting rights and election law enforcement. In 2005, Representative John Conyers and 30 other House members also sent a letter urging Alberto Gonzales to account for lax enforcement of this important law that would welcome millions of low-income voters into the democratic process. The same year, Senator Arlen Specter sent a letter to the Attorney General asking him to immediately respond to shifting priorities and inactivity in the Civil Rights Division.
"On all accounts, the response has been disappointing and indicative of a changing focus and partisanship at DOJ: In fact, using a different provision of the NVRA, the Justice Department has instead sued several states to require them to purge allegedly ineligible voters from the rolls more vigorously. A federal court recently rejected one such lawsuit because the Department could not prove its claims.
"A forthcoming report from Demos offers concrete evidence that reinvigorated attempts to enforce the NVRA dramatically improve registration levels at public assistance agencies. In North Carolina, renewed enforcement efforts led to many counties registering more new voters in the single month of February 2007 than in the entire year of 2005.
"Any politicization of voting rights enforcement is detrimental to democracy and should not be tolerated. I urge Congress to investigate state non-compliance with the National Voter Registration Act and that it demand that the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice perform its critical duty enforcing this law.
For more information, or to download Demos' reports on the National Voter Registration Act and important election reform, visit www.demos.org.
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