Pennsylvania Developing Plan to Boost Voter Registration at State Agencies
Newsletter Volume 4 Issue 3
November 30, 2009
PENNSYLVANIA -- The Pennsylvania Department of State and the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare have taken steps to increase voter registration of clients of the state’s social service agencies, to improve compliance with federal and state law.
The move follows pressure from Advancement Project and other members of the Pennsylvania Voters Coalition, which have been concerned that Pennsylvania’s public assistance and disability agencies have not appeared to provide sufficient voter registration services and assistance to their clients.
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) was enacted to increase the registration of “the poor and people with disabilities” who do not have driver’s licenses and would not be registering at a Department of Motor Vehicles. To accomplish this goal, federal law and related state law require covered agencies to follow specific procedures to ensure that these clients are offered opportunities to register to vote. Yet unfortunately, the Pennsylvania Department of State’s 2006-2008 Annual Reports to the General Assembly showed that very low numbers of persons receiving these services were being registered in Pennsylvania, despite the fact that the agencies provided services to hundreds of thousands of clients, many of whom are unregistered.
To try to remedy this, Advancement Project, in conjunction with the Voters Coalition, wrote a letter in July 2009 to Governor Edward Rendell, Secretary of State Pedro Cortés, and the heads of the covered agencies in Pennsylvania. The coalition’s letter detailed the stark contrast between the great numbers of Pennsylvanians receiving services from these agencies, and the dearth of Pennsylvanians being registered to vote by most of these same agencies. For example, in 2008, 40 (out of 67) county Area Agencies on Aging, 38 county disability agencies, 51 county mental health/ mental retardation agencies, and 58 county education agencies reported zero registrations for the entire year.
The coalition requested a meeting with the Departments to discuss and establish a plan of action to ensure Pennsylvania agencies’ compliance with the law. The potential impact from improving these procedures is great: in Missouri, after a similar NVRA compliance lawsuit was filed, and a preliminary injunction was entered, there was more than a 12-fold increase in the number of voter registrations collected by the state’s public- assistance agency. Incredibly, the number of voter registrations increased from fewer than 8,000, annually, to more than 100,000.
While the Pennsylvania Department of State initially appeared reluctant to address the Voters Coalition’s concerns, the Department subsequently agreed to arrange the meetings with the covered agencies and is playing a key role in revising agency procedures with the goal of increasing registrations. During a quarterly meeting with several members of the Coalition in September, the Secretary of State agreed to schedule these meetings, beginning with the Department of Public Welfare (DPW).
Advancement Project’s Pennsylvania Senior Attorney Kathryn Boockvar said that despite the Department’s apparent initial hesitations, the meeting held on Nov. 12 with Deputy Secretary of State Tom Weaver, Chief of Voter Registration Lindsey Hock, and officials from DPW, was very positive and productive.
During the meeting, state officials revealed that in the last few months, they had revised their voter registration training procedures of agency employees and would be enacting a program to train all employees every six months, which is required by state law. Boockvar said state officials acknowledged that they did not know how often prior employee trainings on voter registration procedures had occurred and what procedures had been covered. To remedy this, the agency distributed a power-point presentation, which they intend to use uniformly for the six-month trainings, and officials invited Advancement Project and the other attendees to assess the state’s training plans and give feedback. The new training program was scheduled to begin the following day.
Additionally, DPW officials said that as of Nov. 1, a new quality control program was developed, which, for apparently the first time, will include assessment of voter registration compliance and effectiveness in the agency offices. As with the training program, Boockvar said the agency invited Advancement Project and the other attendees to review the quality control program and give suggestions. The coalition team is reviewing these programs as well as programs used successfully in Missouri and other states to help maximize effectiveness in Pennsylvania.
“These developments in Pennsylvania are a terrific first step,” said Boockvar. Now, Advancement Project and the coalition will have to assess the plans, submit proposals, and ultimately review and analyze the results, which, hopefully, will produce significantly higher rates of voter registration.
To Boockvar, one of the biggest challenges in improving the DPW’s procedures, is the difficulty of providing the same voter registration services to clients who apply for benefits by remote means. She said that people may apply for some DPW benefits on the phone or online, which adds significant convenience for benefits purposes, but produces a greater challenge for voter registration. When an applicant appears in person, the DPW employee may assist the applicant with voter registration concurrently and submit the application directly. But, she said if a person applies by phone or online, there is a greater chance the person may never request or complete a voter registration application.
“We have to be creative in devising ways to reach remote applicants who never come into the office,” she said. It is also essential that the significance of this effort be communicated effectively to state employees.
“One of the things we talked about with the officials is that agency employees need to understand and feel that voter registration is a core component of what they’re doing. Voter registration assistance should not be perceived as a secondary, voluntary service. It is mandatory, and training should emphasize to employees that it is a core part of their underlying mission,” said Boockvar. This acceptance of the mission should help employees to communicate effectively with clients about voter registration, whether it is by phone or in-person, which, in turn, should increase the likelihood that unregistered clients will register.
The meeting on Nov. 12 was just the first of many meetings, said Boockvar. Advancement Project and other members of the Pennsylvania Voters Coalition expect to meet separately with the heads of other state agencies, to create similar reforms in the other covered agencies. “The deputy secretary of state made it clear that this is a continuing effort, and we look forward to this partnership to ensure that low-income, disabled, and elderly Pennsylvanians can fully participate in our democracy.”
