One of President Joe Biden’s first executive orders in early March 2021 directed all federal agencies to determine what actions they could take to encourage voter registration and participation. The agencies got off to a fairly good start, meeting a September 2021 deadline for proposals, but their performance in fulfilling those plans has been lagging in many areas according to a review conducted at the two-year mark by a coalition of voting rights advocacy groups.
The review found “a few agencies have made noteworthy progress, most have either made minimal progress on their initial strong commitments or have left important opportunities on the table.” If all the agencies were fulfilling Biden’s order, an additional 3.5 million voters could be registered every year, the group estimates. There’s one in particular that has the capacity to reach millions of people every year—8.4 million of them in the 2022 enrollment period. That’s Health and Human Services through the healthcare.gov website.
That was the plan for HHS, to integrate a voter registration system into the federal Affordable Care Act exchange. Thirty-three states—including every southern state except Kentucky—uses the federal platform to sign people up for health insurance. Signing them up to register to vote while they’re at it shouldn’t be too heavy a lift.
That’s what a bunch of Democratic senators think, and they want to know why it hasn’t happened yet. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island wrote to Secretary Xavier Becerra a year ago, asking for a progress report on his plans. They didn’t get a response and they are not happy.
“[W]e continue to await a formal response from HHS that includes a substantive update on all the commitments the agency has made to support efforts that help Americans access the ballot box,” they wrote late last month. “While we acknowledge some progress HHS has made in fulfilling its promises under the Voting EO, we are concerned that other commitments—particularly the one involving HealthCare.gov—are not being sufficiently prioritized,” asking for a detailed report on the department’s progress by July 10.
Asked by State News for comment, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees healthcare.gov operations, said that they were “working to expand the places on Healthcare.gov that connect users to voting information at vote.gov without needing to be logged in,” including with a brand-new link to vote.gov in the website’s footer and “new links to voting information on several resource articles on the site.”
That’s the minimum they could do, Laura Williamson, a senior policy adviser for voting rights at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told State News. It’s passive, and easily overlooked by people coming to find health insurance and tuning out other information. The agency needs to proactively push voter registration to these customers. “The agency must take steps to integrate a voter registration question into the application on Healthcare.gov immediately to promote access to voting across the country,” Williamson added. “There is no time to waste.”
Because all of the southern states are using healthcare.gov for signups, integrating voter registration into the process “would create a meaningful registration opportunity for millions of voters across the Deep South,” Williamson said.
Why is that so important? The coalition of voter advocacy groups groups explains how much catching up Black people as well as other racial and ethnic communities have to do in voter participation:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 77% of white eligible voters are registered to vote, compared to only 69% of Black eligible voters, 61% of Latinx eligible voters, 64% of Asian-American eligible voters, and 63% of Native-American eligible voters. Only 64% of young people (ages 18-24) are registered to vote, a rate 10 percentage points lower than all other age groups. Similar disparities exist in turnout rates, including for naturalized citizens, the majority of whom are people of color and who now represent one in ten eligible voters, but whose turnout rates lag behind their U.S.-born counterparts.
“As the next presidential election nears, it is critical that HHS facilitate greater access to voter registration services, in an effective manner, through HealthCare.gov, to ensure every American has the opportunity to engage in our democratic process,” the senators wrote to Becerra. Getting that done for the next enrollment period and ahead of the 2024 election is critical.
