GA: proposed regulations restrict private voter registration drives

[Wilms]

Vote Law Blog

Wednesday, 5 October 2005

Georgia: state proposes regulations restrictions on private voter registration drives

Posted by Edward at October 5, 2005 07:34 PM

The Charles H. Wesley Education Foundation announces: The State Election Board in Georgia has recently enacted a very restrictive regulation, Rule 183-1-6-.03(3)(o), governing the distribution and collection of voter registration forms by private individuals and groups. The new rule — which requires all voter registration applications collected by private volunteers to be sealed before being handed to the volunteers; prohibits photocopying of applications; and requires all volunteers to submit applications within 72 hours of receipt — is in the process of being submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice for preclearance, pursuant to the Voting Rights Act.

If allowed to become law, this new regulation will make it extremely difficult for nonpartisan voter registration groups to carry out their important verification and quality control functions, particularly during busy registration drives. Many common errors or omissions on voter registration applications (e.g., missing dates of birth, personal identification numbers, or signatures; failure to check required boxes; etc.) are typically not identified by private voter registration workers until after the conclusion of the registration drive, when volunteers can focus more carefully on each application.

If these errors are not caught prior to submitting the applications to local election officials, applicants may risk having their applications rejected and/or not being processed in time for an upcoming election. This could have a particularly devastating impact in low income communities and communities of color, where many private voter registration efforts are focused.

For these reasons, Georgia’s newly enacted rule has been opposed by several civil and voting rights organizations, including Advancement Project, Project VOTE, the Service Employees International Union, Georgia for Democracy, and our own group, The Charles H. Wesley Education Foundation.

You may view the Action Alert and the proposed regulations by clicking on these links.

snip/links

http://www.votelaw.com/blog/archives/003395.html

[BayCityProgressive]

1. WHAT!?!?!?!?

How is this constituional????Are they trying to bring back Jim Crow? Voter I.D.'s, stopping voter drives...what else.

[napi21]

2. I'm posting this in the Ga. forum too! n/t

[sandnsea]

3. right goal, wrong solution

The Baker-Carter Report had the right solution to the voter registration problem, numbered registrations with a receipt to the voter. That way groups who toss registrations from the opposing party can be identified. And people who registered will have a receipt to present to the precinct or county elections official. But noooo, we had to trash the whole report instead of presenting it as a good document that needed a different approach to ID's.

[Wilms]

4. You need to post here more often.

That was a good post.