The Independent View: NYC Pro-Voter Law Non-Compliance

Last summer, New York City Mayor de Blasio issued his first Mayoral Directive aimed to improve city agency voter registration efforts. The City passed local Law 29, also known as the Pro-Voter Law, to expand voter registration opportunities at municipal agencies.

But City agencies are not doing enough to help New Yorkers register to vote found a new report released by the Pro-Voter Law Coalition. The coalition of groups is led by Center for Popular Democracy, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), Citizens Union of the City of New York, and the New York Public Interest Research Group/NYPIRG.

Information for the report, A Broken Promise: Agency-Based Voter Registration in New York City, was obtained through Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests and field investigations, and revealed a lack of compliance across city agencies with the Pro-Voter Law.

Key findings included:

- Widespread failure to comply with the Pro-Voter Law’s requirement to provide voter registration application forms. Specifically, city agencies failed to do so in 84 percent of client interactions.

- Efforts ranged from the inconsistent administration of the Pro-Voter Law, to an almost complete lack of apparent attempts to fully administer the law at the city agencies that responded to FOIL requests.

- Increased noncompliance for limited English proficient New Yorkers. Only 40 percent, or 2 out of 5, of agency clients whose primary language was not English were given translated voter registration applications as mandated by the law.

- Agency staff received no regular training on voter registration procedures mandated by the law.

The Pro-Voter Law requires 18 city agencies and, under certain circumstances, their associated subcontractors, to provide voter registration forms to all persons submitting applications, renewals, or recertification for agency services, or notifying the agency of a change of address. The law included each of the City’s 59 community boards as well.

In its report, the Pro-Voter Law Coalition made 12 recommendations including the following:

- Establish comprehensive protocols by December 31, 2014 to ensure that all agencies provide voter registration applications to clients when they apply for services, renewal or recertification for services and change of address relating to such services and promptly transmit all completed voter registration applications to the NYC Board of Elections.

- Require agencies to use coded voter registration forms specific to each agency. Solicit quarterly reports by the Board of Elections on the numbers of forms submitted by city agencies (a model protocol is proposed in City Council Intro 356 of 2014).

- Mandate that agency staff provide the same level of assistance in completing voter registration forms as is given to other agency transactions. This should include verbal assistance.

On November 24, 2014, the New York City Council's Committee on Governmental Operations approved the following:

Int 0356-2014 (Proposed Int. No. 356-A)
A Local Law to amend the New York city charter, in relation to expanding agency based voter registration to additional city agencies.

Int 0493-2014 (Proposed Int. No. 493-A)
Resolution calling upon the New York State Legislature to pass, and the Governor to sign, legislation permitting voter registration forms utilized by agencies participating in the agency assisted voter registration program to code their registration forms, and for such codes to be withheld from public inspection.

The new legislation is headed to the full Council for a vote on Tuesday and then, if passed as expected, to the desk of Mayor Bill de Blasio. The bills expand the mandate of the Pro-Voter law to seven additional agencies and create a standard for enforcing the law, including required semi-annual reports from participating agencies.