7) New Laws Discouraging Voter Registration Drives

A Voting Rights Victory—in Florida, of all Places

http://www.tcf.org/list.asp?type=NC&pubid=1390

In a rare victory for advocates of expanding voter participation in the United States, a federal court has enjoined implementation of a Florida law that would have gravely imperiled efforts to register citizens to vote in that state.  The state had enacted a law that would have imposed severe monetary penalties on volunteers and voter registration organizations—already operating on extremely limited budgets—if they did not immediately turn in the voter registration applications they collected, regardless of the circumstances. 

Issue in Brief: Restrictions on Voter Registration Drives

http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/dem_vr_castout_1.html

Summary

· 54 million eligible Americans are not registered to vote.

· In the 2004 election cycle, non-profit organizations registered millions of Americans to vote, many for the first time.

· Voter registration drives help citizens who face the greatest barriers to voting

· Many states have recently enacted burdensome restrictions on voter registration drives, enforced with heavy fines and criminal penalties.

· These laws require voter registration groups to go through complicated procedures before conducting voter registration drives.

· Many of these new laws have shut down or substantially impeded voter registration drives

· Laws restricting voter registration drives do not address any real problems.