This National Voter Registration Day, let’s talk about bureaucracy — people’s favorite policy topic! Though you might not realize it, many aspects of bureaucracy are good. Bureaucracy helps ensure buildings don’t collapse during an earthquake. It has created well-known rules for driving that lead to fewer crashes and deaths. It requires doctors to receive training before performing surgeries; thank goodness! It also makes it easier to register to vote through processes like online voter registration and Motor Voter. But there is also bad bureaucracy, sometimes called “red tape.” Bad bureaucracy has been used for over 150 years to make it harder for people to vote. And while there have been significant historical strides to remove harmful bureaucratic barriers that prevented people from registering to vote, we are under threat of significant backsliding in our rights to register to vote.
The bad kind of bureaucracy is on the rise again.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
Sixty years ago, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed. But before we talk about that, let’s go back further, to 1870 when the United States adopted the 15th Amendment to give Black men the right to vote. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Just five years after the Civil War, this monumental amendment should have guaranteed the right of Black men across the country to vote. But rather immediately, former Confederate states went to work throwing up bureaucratic hurdles preventing Black men from voting, including establishing complex voter registration processes.
At that time, voter registration in general was still fairly new. The process had recently been established in Northeast states with the unofficial purpose of preventing immigrants, low-income people, and people with less education from being able to vote. In the South, poll taxes, literacy tests, and more created a bureaucratic web that made it virtually impossible for Black Americans to vote. Until 1965, those bureaucratic barriers continued to deny many their right to vote. The Voting Rights Act made it illegal for states to adopt any “standard, practice, or procedure to abridge or deny voting rights based on race, color, or membership in a language minority group.” And to prevent efforts to circumvent the Voting Rights Act, the law established that the intent and effect of laws mattered when determining the legality of state laws. The law also required states that had histories of discriminatory voting laws to seek preclearance from the federal government before new laws could go into effect. Good bureaucracy blocking bad.
National Voter Registration Act of 1993
Though there were several important pieces of legislation passed after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the next sweeping voting rights law came many years later with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. In the 1980s, there was a large movement of volunteers working to register people to vote across the nation. But (bad) bureaucratic hurdles made it difficult for them to register people and achieve their lofty goal of registering millions of new voters. In coalition, groups such as the League of Women Voters and the NAACP advocated for laws that would streamline the voter registration process and make it easier to vote. The result of their advocacy? Some positive bureaucracy. The National Voter Registration Act created the “Motor Voter” program that allows people to easily register to vote when they are applying for their driver’s licenses. It also requires that state government public service agencies provide an opportunity for the people they serve to register to vote. And it obliges states to allow citizens to register to vote by mail. Plus, the National Voter Registration Act made it illegal to intimidate anyone from registering to vote.
Help America Vote Act of 2002
If you don’t remember the 2000 presidential election, let’s just say that events occurred that highlighted the need for bureaucratic reforms in the election system. And just two years later, the Help America Vote Act passed overwhelmingly and with wide bipartisan support. In terms of voter registration, the law made states set up a centralized voter registration database and required them to create a voter ID requirement that people either show an ID when they register to vote or the first time they vote. (I have written previously about how, while it might sound good on the face of it, voter ID requirements have had the effect of decreasing voter turnout for Hispanic, Black, Asian, and multi-racial voters. Harmful bureaucracy.) The law also made helpful changes like creating a federal voter registration form that could be used across the country.
Shelby v. Holder & other threats to enforcement of the Voting Rights Act
In 2013, things took a turn for the worse with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Shelby v. Holder. Remember earlier when I mentioned that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 created a preclearance requirement that states with a history of voter suppression seek approval from the Department of Justice before passing new voting laws? In 2010, Shelby County, Alabama, asked the courts to strike down that provision of the Act. And in 2013, the Supreme Court did just that. It ruled that the formula used to determine which states must comply with preclearance was unconstitutional because it was outdated. Until and unless Congress creates a new formula, preclearance is not required. States that previously had to seek preclearance, such as North Carolina, quickly went to work, passing bureaucratic changes that made it harder for people to register to vote such as ending same-day voter registration on Election Day.
Another threat to the Voting Rights Act is currently moving through federal courts and might soon be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. It started in Arkansas. In 2021, the Arkansas NAACP and Arkansas Public Policy Panel sued the state in federal court arguing that the newly drawn Arkansas congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black Arkansans. In 2022, U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky ruled in Little Rock that private citizens have no private right of action to sue for enforcement of the Act. In his controversial opinion, only the U.S. Department of Justice has that right. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his ruling. Since then, it has been cited in several court cases throughout the country, including a North Dakota lawsuit that the Supreme Court is currently considering adding to its docket. If the justices rule that citizens cannot sue over a violation of their rights under the Act, another major enforcement mechanism of the law will be destroyed.
Other Efforts to Create Bureaucratic Huddles for Voter Registration
Sometimes bad bureaucracy isn’t about what you do, it is about what you don’t do. Forty-two states have online voter registration, with Arizona being the first to establish the process in 2002. Arkansas is not one of those states. Online voter registration would make it much easier for Arkansans to register to vote, especially for would-be voters who have disabilities. While there was momentum in the 2021 legislative session to pass an online voter registration bill, it ultimately failed. In the 2023 and 2025 legislative sessions, the bill did not get out of committee.
Nationally, Congress has been considering the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require strict proof of citizenship to register to vote or to update your voter registration. It is important to note that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal and state elections. And between 1999 and 2023, only 77 instances of noncitizen voting were identified, according to the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Cases database. If the SAVE Act passes, eligible documents would include: “a valid U.S. passport, military ID and service record; a government-issued photo ID showing U.S. birthplace; or a government-issued photo ID that does not indicate birthplace or citizenship and a valid secondary document.” The Brennan Center for Justice reported over 21 million Americans do not have easy access to these documents. If this bureaucratic hurdle were put in place, millions of eligible Americans could be prevented from voting.
On National Voter Registration Day, Participate in the Process
After the passage of the 15th Amendment, it took about 100 years for the Voting Rights Act to allow full realization of the purpose of the amendment. The law ended many harmful bureaucratic measures that had prevented people from registering to vote. It was the result of decades of advocacy, lobbying, and fighting back against violence and disenfranchisement. The positive bureaucratic measures in that law, such as preclearance, largely ended the harmful, disenfranchising bureaucracy that blocked voter registration. And in 1993, with the creation of the National Voter Registration Act, Americans’ right to register to vote was further protected. Despite efforts over the last decade to roll back the rights in these laws and make it hard to register to vote, it is more important than ever to do so.
This September, register, update your registration, and help others register. Good bureaucracy reinforces our right to vote. And that is the bureaucracy I am celebrating in this National Voter Registration Day.