Motor Voter Law Drives Registration to High Levels

In Florida, a recent statewide festival celebrated the registration of more than 1 million new voters, the flesh-and-blood progeny of the nation’s controversial “motor voter” reforms.

In Georgia, motor voter brought almost half a million new names to the rolls in 1995, far outstripping the paltry 8,500 who registered in 1994--and that had been considered a good year. Nowadays, Georgians can sign up to vote not only at driver’s license bureaus but even in the pharmacy sections of their local grocery stores, conveniently close to supplies of antacid.

The number of new registrants has “blown away even our most optimistic expectations, and we have been very, very pleased,” said Wendy Davis of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

Yet in California and some other states with Republican governors, the grousing continues. Mississippi and Illinois officials grudgingly complied with the new voting law by setting up two separate groups of voters--one registered under motor voter and eligible to vote in federal elections only, the other registered under the old system and eligible to vote in all races. Thus, in Tuesday’s primary in Illinois, the more-than-100,000 residents who registered under the motor voter procedure will not be allowed to cast ballots in state and local elections.

Motor voter, which took effect Jan. 1, 1995, requires officials at driver’s license bureaus, welfare offices and selected public gathering places to offer voter registration to people who come in for their services--a historic change from past practices, which depended on citizens seeking out registrars.

Arguing that it was too costly and rife with possibilities for fraud, California Gov. Pete Wilson stalled its implementation here until last June 19. He continued to fight it until a few weeks ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court turned aside Wilson’s challenge and thus quashed the last of seven court cases filed by GOP-led states.

Wilson’s concerns--and those of other GOP governors--are contradicted by the experience of many states that have embraced motor voter, the most sweeping voting rights reform since the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971.

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In states that have registered hundreds of thousands of new voters, evidence of intentional fraud is virtually nonexistent. People may wrongly register on occasion, but the error rate is no larger than under other systems, elections officials say.

It has yet to prove costly and, in a turn that took politicians by surprise, it has also failed to be the boon to Democrats that many Republicans feared. Indeed, early evidence suggests that Republicans and independents are the groups reaping the most benefit.

While even some proponents agree that it needs tinkering, motor voter has had one clear beneficial effect--making the government bend to the needs of its citizens, not the reverse.

In the pharmacy section of a Kroger supermarket near Atlanta, for example, Sheila Dewberry recalled that the first time she registered to vote she had to march to the courthouse to fill out all sorts of paperwork. Now, she marveled, she was at her neighborhood store, getting a driver’s license and registering to vote simultaneously.

“I think it’s super,” she said. “This will get more people to the polls. Certainly, I am going to vote. We’ve got to get [President] Clinton out of there.”

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Near her, a clerk snapped Leslie Umeh’s driver’s license photograph and told the 29-year-old secretary that her voter registration card--Umeh’s first--would be mailed out.

“This is great,” said Umeh, who plans to vote for Democrats. “It’s something I wanted to do and probably wouldn’t have done.”

Proponents of the registration reforms had pressed forward with the argument that it would bring into the system some of the 72 million Americans eligible--but not registered--to vote. And it has.

Since the law took effect, an estimated 11 million people have registered to vote, according to a compilation by Human SERVE, a New York group that helped press the campaign for motor voter. There are no comparable figures for 1994, but elections officials across much of the country say their numbers are far higher than in previous years.

By the 1996 general election in November, Human SERVE estimates, 20 million will have registered, and another 20 million by the 1998 elections.

But the huge increases are hardly universal. While Southern states like Florida and Georgia increased their voter rolls by more than 12%, other states, particularly California and several large northern states, report only middling success.

California registered or re-registered 166,035 people between mid-June and the end of December at Department of Moter Vehicles offices, according to state statistics. Another 82,122 registered by mail, and 97,855 registered at social services offices. The secretary of state’s office said it was impossible to cull out numbers of new registrants, as other states have done, but in any case the numbers are a smattering compared to the 14.4 million registered voters in California.

In large part, the differing results appear the offspring of politics: The states without significant registration increases generally have Republican governors, while those where motor voter’s impact has been noticeable have Democrats at the helm.

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Ironically, the fears among Republicans that the law would mostly boost Democratic registration appear groundless.

In Kentucky, motor voter registrants who turned out for the state’s November 1995 general election were almost evenly split between the Republican and Democratic parties, Secretary of State John Y. Brown III said.

Among the state’s total motor voter registrants, whether they voted or not, 42% signed up as Democrats, 33% as Republicans and 24% gave no party preference. That breakdown is nowhere near the 2-1 advantage Democrats had held over the GOP under the old registration system.

In Florida, the first year’s motor voter registrants were roughly 25% to 30% Democrat and 30% to 35% Republican, state officials said. But 33% to 40% were neither--a huge figure in a state where only 8% of the voters historically have spurned both major parties.

“Neither the Republican fears nor the Democratic hopes were realized by the reality here,” said state elections director David Rancourt.

Another well-publicized concern--excessive cost--has yet to materialize.

In Washington, where a state version of motor voter took effect in 1992, elections director Gary McIntosh said costs have been “fairly minimal.” The per-voter registration cost has dropped to as little as a quarter of that under the former system, he said. Officials in other states agree.

Fraud still looms as a potential worry, however.

Elections officials of all stripes believe that the reform does not allow them to deeply probe whether an individual is registered more than once.

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But the officials say indications so far are that new registrants who erroneously sign up do so by mistake or as a sidelight to another pursuit--for example, an underage teen seeking a fake driver’s license. And interviews with officials in several states, including those who oppose the law, turned up no incidents of intentional fraud.

Proponents of motor voter argue that it has far less potential for fraud than other registration systems.

For example, they say, California and other states allowed mail-in registrations before motor voter. Yet that process cannot guard against individuals sending in any number of forms under different addresses.

To accomplish that under motor voter, people would have to show up at a state agency repeatedly--getting their picture taken each time if they were at the DMV--and register under threat of felony charges.

“We don’t think many people are going to walk in, get a driver’s license, commit a federal felony and then get their picture taken,” said Becky Cain, president of the League of Women Voters, which strongly backs motor voter.

Ultimately, the new law is likely to be judged not on its explicit goal--registering voters--but on whether it has a lasting impact on voter turnout.

In Washington state, turnout has grown. In its 1992 general election, which occurred nine months into the state’s new program, turnout was 82.6% of registered voters, the highest since 1944.

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Election officials cautioned that voting rates for motor voter registrants were expected to be low, since this is a group either too busy, disinterested or dissatisfied to have registered when the system was more difficult.

“It’s going to be a protracted three-step process,” said Brown of Kentucky. “First, we register the voters; secondly we need to educate and interest the voters in government and thirdly we need to motivate them and try to get them out to vote.”

Times researcher Edith Stanley in Atlanta contributed to this story.