Motor voter problems mean delays at polls

When county clerks in New Mexico tried to figure out why voter registrations had slowed to a trickle this spring despite an upcoming primary, they made a surprising discovery: The culprit was a new online voter registration system at motor vehicle offices.

Introduced with fanfare in January, the new system required drivers to go to a separate computer kiosk at the motor vehicle office to complete their voter registration. That proved to be too much hassle for many potential voters; it also violated the federal "motor voter" law.

New Mexico, which has gone back temporarily to using paper voter registration forms, was trying to improve its motor voter performance in response to a 2010 court order. In most states, no one knows how well motor vehicle agencies comply with the mandate to register voters because no one is really keeping track. But a growing consensus says they are failing.

Poor implementation of the National Voter Registration Act, the 21-year-old law that requires motor vehicle offices to register voters, is emerging as a problem when almost every aspect of voting is coming under scrutiny, either because of controversial voter identification laws or long lines at the polls. The bipartisan commission formed by President Obama to investigate long voting lines in the 2012 election called the motor voter law "the election statute most often ignored.'' Motor vehicle departments "are supposed to play the most important registration role,'' the commission said. Instead, they "are the weakest link in the system. ... Some DMVs appear to disregard the law.''

Inaccurate voter registration causes holdups on Election Day, and a big part of inaccurate voter registrations is the failure by motor vehicle agencies to register voters or to update voter registrations when drivers update their license information, election experts say.

The problem affects millions of Americans. More than 130 million voted in the 2012 election, and, according to the presidential commission, 10 million of them waited more than half an hour to vote. As many as 16 million people are inaccurately registered. In some states, up to 15% of voting records are inaccurate, the commission said. About 50 million Americans, one-quarter of the voting-eligible population, aren't registered at all.

Millions of people get to the polling place and discover their voter registration doesn't exist or has not been updated along with their driver's license, says Chris Thomas, election director in Michigan and a member of the presidential commission.

"The lines and delays on Election Day are due in part to the failure of this program,'' Thomas says. "There's been a lot of disenfranchised voters over the last 20 years that this (law) has not been implemented.''

Last spring, the Pew Charitable Trusts Election Initiative tried to find out how well states were doing at complying with the motor voter law. What they found was that states kept such poor data that in many cases it was impossible to tell.

"The fact that government doesn't have its act together is costing taxpayers money,'' says David Becker, Pew's director of election initiatives. "It's causing voters not to have the information they need."

The problems include incompatible or antiquated technology, spotty training of employees, poor record-keeping and lack of interest on the part of leadership, election experts say.

Registering voters "is being viewed as a secondary responsibility of the motor vehicle division,'' says Maggie Toulouse Oliver, clerk of Bernalillo County, New Mexico's most populous county. "In fact, it is just as much a primary responsibility as is licensing and registration.''

Delaware DMV head Jennifer Cohan agrees that most agencies have fallen down on voter registration.

"Elections have nothing to do with the ability to drive. Sadly but truly, a lot of the DMVs across the nation don't have the resources they need … so motor voter does get put to the side,'' she says. Delaware and Michigan, where the motor vehicle department and elections division are both part of the secretary of State's office, are the top performers in registering voters at the DMV.

According to federal Election Assistance Commission surveys taken each election cycle, less than 30% of voter registrations come through motor vehicle departments.

Those reports note that data from many states are incomplete. In California, for instance, some county clerks who collect voter registration forms don't track where they come from, so it is impossible to compare, for instance, how many people updated their driver's license with how many people updated their voter registration.

(Six states are exempt from the motor voter law: North Dakota, because it does not require voter registration, and Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming, because they had same-day registration when the law went into effect in 1994.)

In the swing state of Ohio, 24% of registrations came through the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles, according to the Election Assistance Commission report. Secretary of State Jon Husted says that until 2012, computer systems in his office and at the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles could not exchange information. Now they do so daily, he says. "We've made a lot of progress in that respect, and thankfully the BMV has cooperated.''

Husted says his office has asked the motor vehicle bureau to include motor voter compliance in its evaluation of the private vendors it hires to run motor vehicle branches. "They have told us that they take it very seriously,'' he says. "But again, it's outside of my control because these folks don't work for me.''

Vendors are properly trained, Ohio motor vehicle agency spokeswoman Lindsey Bohrer said in an e-mail. "Our deputy registrars ask every single person at every single transaction if they are registered or would like to register to vote.''

New Mexico's motor vehicle division plans to introduce software next year that will allow licensing and voter registration simultaneously, as required by the motor voter law. In June, it returned to printing out voter registration forms, asking voters to complete them by hand, then sending the stacks of paper to county clerks. The agency sent follow-up letters to 7,300 New Mexico residents who had visited the motor vehicle agency since January but didn't complete a voter registration form, division spokesman S.U. Mahesh said.

"For those of us who have been working on this issue for many years, it's very frustrating,'' says state Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, a Democrat, who helped pass legislation allowing the motor vehicle department to use electronic voter registration.

Since its negative report on motor voter compliance came out in May, Pew's election initiative effort has begun working with state motor vehicle departments to improve performance. Cohan, the president of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, says that at the group's annual conference this week, there will be an entire day devoted to motor voter compliance. A dozen states, including New Mexico, have asked for information about Delaware's system, which uses an electronic signature pad like those in retail stores for voters to provide their information, Cohan says.

"They need to pay attention before it's too late,'' Cohan says — "too late" being the next presidential election, when voter registration and voter turnout surges. "2016 is going to be a rough time for some DMVs that don't get proactive on the motor voter issue.''

In New Mexico, there is some irony in the problem the state motor vehicle division had with its online registration system: New Mexico was at least trying to comply with the law because it was sued for not doing so. A coalition of voting rights groups took New Mexico to court in 2010.

Voting rights groups have brought numerous lawsuits against states for failing to offer voter registration through public assistance agencies, which the motor voter law requires. They are becoming more interested in suing motor vehicle agencies.

"We've begun to get pretty interested in them,'' says Estelle Rogers, legislative director of Project Vote, one of the groups that sued New Mexico. "Our old complacency about how well it works at the driver's license agency … I don't say that sentence so much anymore.''