Voter Rights

What Motor Voter Says About Nonprofit Agencies

People with disabilities were included under the requirements of the National Voter Registration Act as Congress felt that people with disabilities are too often left out of voter registration activities. NVRA requires agencies that provide services to people with disabilities, and which receive federal funds, to offer voter registration. This can be done at intake, at change of address and at re-certification points. Furthermore, those agencies that provide people with services must bring the same level of service to the individuals in executing voter registration.

For instance, if an agency coordinates the work of independent living assistants who visit homes each day, they can bring registration cards for their clients, they can them help fill out and then get the voter registration card to the election board. Another example could involve paratransit service provided by a disability agency that is funded by state Medicaid funds. Since most of the recipients of this transportation service do not require an office visit as business is mostly conducted via dispatch over the phone, the help of paratransit staff can be involved in voter registration activities.

The kinds of agencies covered by the law are vocational rehabilitation state agencies and their contractees, independent living centers, commissions for the deaf and blind, developmental disabilities councils, protection and advocacy agencies, UCPs, ARCs, Easter Seals, among thousands of other possible disability services organizations. If such agencies have a state contract, they must do voter registration under NVRA.

Agencies can and are encouraged to register the family and friends of persons with disabilities. Also, any agency that wants to do voter registration can do it even if not required under the law (that is, if they don't receive state money) and they want to do it.

The NVRA eliminated all of the very cumbersome registration procedures that used to exist. Agency staff no longer have to be deputized, or have to go to training sessions. The chief election officer for a state must provide the agency with voter registration cards, no matter how many they ask for.

If an agency, e.g, a state medicaid agency, can re-design its intake form to do so, NVRA urges incorporation of the voter registration form into a combined intake voter registration form if the agency chooses to do so to save time and resources.

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