In 2006, the Voter Protection Program team worked tirelessly in states across the country to support our local partners on the ground working to increase voter registration among traditionally disenfranchised populations. As the year came to a close, we take a moment to celebrate a few of the accomplishments in the field. Key successes are highlighted below by state:

Florida | Maryland | Michigan | Missouri | Ohio | Pennsylvania

Florida

• Advancement Project, along with the Brennan Center, Kramer Levin Naftalis and Frankel, LLP, and Becker and Poliakoff, challenged the constitutionality of a law passed in 2005 that imposed potentially ruinous fines and burdensome reporting requirements for third party organizations conducting voter registration, causing some to shut down or dramatically curtail their nonpartisan voter registration operations. In the fall of 2006, we successfully enjoined enforcement of the law.
  
  
• Advancement Project identified HAVA matching as a systemic problem preventing potentially eligible voters from being added to the rolls. We built a diverse coalition of nonpartisan voter protection groups around this issue, drafted a letter to the secretary of state, and started an education and advocacy campaign in the media, including favorable editorials printed in the Miami Herald, the Orlando Sentinel, and the Tampa Tribune.

Maryland

• Advancement Project identified a systemic problem with the Maryland voter registration process in which voter registration applicants were being classified as “pending” because their name, date of birth and other personal information did not produce an exact match against the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration or Social Security Administration database. Advancement Project urged Maryland to discontinue this practice. Our litigation team reached a settlement agreement with the Maryland State Board of Elections prior to the November election. The board agreed to: mail revised notices to unmatched applicants; amend their website; establish a protocol for manually reviewing unsuccessful matches; ensure adequate supplies of provisional ballots; and issue written public service announcements reminding unmatched applicants to bring identification to the polls on Election Day.
  
  
• Advancement Project and Project Vote helped establish the Maryland Election Reform Coalition, an ad-hoc committee of national and state civil rights and progressive organizations, to build a fair and just election administration system that promotes fair democracy in Maryland. The Coalition obtained an opinion letter from the state attorney general to ensure that "no show" election judges could not prevent the polls from opening on time, recruited election judges to monitor and comment upon their experiences to improve future elections, developed a targeted voter protection field program to protect "pending" and other "provisional ballot" voters, and served as official "watchers" on Election Day.

Michigan

• Advancement Project informed the Saginaw clerk of her obligation to accept applications postmarked by the registration deadline, which resulted in an estimated 150 applications being processed that may have otherwise been rejected.
  
  
• Advancement Project discovered thousands of voters marked for "Cancellation Countdown" in the Michigan Qualified Voter File for failing to respond to voter participation mailings sent by the secretary of state's office. We asked the secretary of state to clarify that undelivered mail is not a ground for requiring identification at the polls; shortly before the election, the secretary of state’s office sent out a reminder to all local election officials making this point.
  
  
• We also discovered recently that the secretary of state’s office conducted a "quarterly purge" on October 9. These "purges" are now subject to investigation by Advancement Project.

Missouri

• Advancement Project emerged as the primary (and for most of the duration, the only) organization coordinating voter protection work in the state, and we became the primary media and advocacy source for voting rights issues in Missouri during the 2006 election cycle. Our voter protection team successfully resolved 95 percent of the problems encountered on Election Day.
  
  
• In partnership with local advocates, Advancement Project settled a claim with the secretary of state concerning the distribution of voter registration cards to third-party voter registration organizations whose requests for cards had been denied in violation of the NVRA. We also ensured that election officials received accurate lists of voters whose status would be made ineligible due to felony status, which resulted in access to the ballot for some ineligible voters who otherwise would be eligible to vote.
  
  
• The Board of Election Commissioners for the City of St. Louis agreed to give Advancement Project access to copies of the voter registration applications of 5,000 applicants who submitted applications through ACORN and to whom the board sent an intimidating and potentially unlawful notice. On October 24, 2006, the Board sent a notice to these applicants requesting that they contact the board concerning their application and provide additional information, not required under Missouri law, as a condition of their registration. Advancement Project told the board that the notice may have violated federal election law, and the board agreed to send the applicants a revised notice, advising applicants of their right to vote by regular ballot on Election Day upon completion of their application and presentation of suitable identification to an election judge at the polls. Advancement Project will review the applications, along with Missouri's voter registration database, to confirm whether these applicants have been added to the voter rolls and, if not, to ensure that ACORN assists them in registering to vote.

Ohio

• Advancement Project presented testimony before the Ohio Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review (JCARR) opposing proposed voter registration rules that would chill voter registration in Ohio. Advancement Project was one of only two representatives of Ohio's large voter protection coalition to testify against the new rules, which required compensated voter registration workers to register with the state, take an online training course, and personally return registration forms directly to the secretary of state or a local election office 10-30 days before an election. Although JCARR voted 6-4, along party lines, in favor of the new proposed rules, our local partner Project Vote filed a lawsuit charging that the newly enacted voter registrations provisions violate the 1st and 14th Amendments, Section 2 of the VRA, and the NVRA.
  
  
• An early review of the new provisional ballot laws enacted under the massive Ohio election law overhaul, House Bill 3 (H.B.3), revealed that the statute failed to provide procedures for counting provisional ballots in every instance. We sought a directive and/or an administrative opinion from the secretary of state on the procedures election officials should use to count these provisional ballots. The consent decree of an ensuing lawsuit, NEOCH v. Blackwell, incorporated our concerns by providing clear procedures on the counting provisional ballots where voters provide the last four digits of their social security number as identification.

Pennsylvania

• Advancement Project learned of plans by election officials to delay and possibly reject voter registration applications because the applicants' personal information did not produce an exact match with the motor vehicle or social security database. In one day, nearly 1,400 such applications were identified in Philadelphia. Advancement Project and attorney Ted Lieverman sent a letter to the secretary of state voicing concerns about the matching requirements. The Pennsylvania Voters Coalition sent a follow-up letter, co-signed by African-American and Latino voters, voters with disabilities, and those who were homeless. Pennsylvania Department of State (DOS) issued a statewide alert informing election officials they were not to delay the processing or reject the voter registration applications of applicants whose registration fails to produce a positive identification match.
  
  
• The Luzerne County Board of Elections was not processing the voter registration applications of some City of Hazleton Latino voters because the applicants personal data did not produce an exact match with another database. In a letter to the election director, Advancement Project urged the processing of otherwise eligible applicants. Shortly after our letter was sent, the Luzerne County election director reversed his position and decided to process the voter registration applications of otherwise eligible voters who fail to produce an exact database match. He admitted that "dual ethnic surnames" can often be inverted in the subject databases, preventing exact matches.