For those of you who do not get a Daily email from Talking Points Memo, the sole purpose of this diary is to call your attention to a story titled Feds: Louisiana Not Providing Voter Registration Forms At Public Assistance Offices Failure to provide such forms is a violation of section seven of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. To quote from the story:
Louisiana officials, the feds asserted, have failed to provide voter registration opportunities as required under NVRA because they haven't designated all offices in the state that provide public assistance as voter registration agencies (including the Office of Aging and Adult Services); failed to provide sufficient supplies of voter registration applications at the designated agencies; and failed to train and monitor employees to make sure they assist in processing voter registration forms."
Let me offer just a wee bit more information below the fold, as well as a quick comment or two.
The potential impact upon voting results could be huge, considering the percentage of Louisiana's population that is enrolled in programs where at registration they should have the opportunity to register to vote. The story notes 1.17 million people enrolled in Medicaid. Compare that to the population of the state in the 2010 Census: 4,533,372. Yet in 2009 and 2010 only 6,037 registration applications were received from public assistance offices, representing 1.1% of all registration applications in the two years.
To look more broadly:
While Louisiana processed over 3.1 million Medicaid applications, renewals and address changes from Jan. 2007 to Jan. 2011 as well as 2.4 million food stamp applications, the agencies registered just 14,725 voter registration applications.
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For some comparison, I poked around the internet. Kentucky is a state with a similar population, 4,339,367 in 2010. I found these 2011 registration statistics from the Kentucky Board of elections. According to this Kentucky data, in FY 2010 the total eligibility for Medicaid in Kentucky was 788,242, a somewhat lower proportion of the population.
We already know that poor people vote at a lower percentage. Motor Voter was intended in part to try to make it easier for many groups, including poor people, to be able to vote. Registration is one part of accomplishing that. Of course, voter-id laws are often aimed precisely at those who are registered through motor voter.
But if you do not even register them???
In Louisiana, while I do not have the racial breakout, I am presuming that those receiving Medicaid are somewhat disproportionally Black, and thus more likely to vote Democratic in 2012, especially with Obama on the top of the ticket. In Kentucky that would be less the case, simply given the different demographics of the two states: according to 2010 Census data the percentages of population that are Black were 32.0% for Louisiana but only 7.8% for Kentucky.
It will be interesting to see whether other Federal action will be taken against states whose actions seem to be intended to suppress the voting of poor people, especially poor people of color. Will all states showing patterns such as that in Louisiana be sued? If not, is there any possible political implications in the selection of a state like Louisiana, where the effective disenfranchisement falls heavily on poor people of color, who are presumed more likely to vote Democratic?
Can actions by the Federal government be timely and effective enough to prevent or at least mitigate suppression of voting by Blacks and other groups more likely to vote Democratic?
Will these actions be combined with actions under the Voting Rights Act, including of pre-clearance of changes of election procedures/districts?
Just thought this was something worth bringing to the attention of those who had not yet seen it.
Peace.