New from The Century Foundation’s Security and Opportunity Agenda

Contact:
Christy Hicks, 212-452-7723

June 30, 2006, New York City—Despite much attention to election reform efforts, voter registration, and get out the vote efforts during the hotly contested presidential election of 2004, only slightly more than half of eligible voters went to the polls. As we enter another crucial election season, The Century Foundation has released a new brief that presents a set of proposals that could result in higher voter turnout.

“Improving Voter Participation” is the latest issue brief in The Century Foundation’s (TCF) Security and Opportunity Agenda series. Written by TCF Democracy Fellow Tova Andrea Wang, the brief highlights efforts to reduce barriers to voting, as well as ideas for motivating people to vote.

Proposals reviewed in the brief include:

• Voters should be allowed to register up to and on Election Day.
• Election Day should be a national holiday.
• As long as a voter appears at any precinct within the county in which the voter resides, the provisional ballot cast by the voter should be counted for all countywide, statewide, and presidential races.
• States should not have restrictive voter identification requirements.
• Social service agencies and departments of motor vehicles must comply with the National Voter Registration Act and provide citizens with an effective opportunity to register to vote.
• Take the partisan politics out of redistricting.
• Extend free media time to candidates.
• Parties and candidates should do more personally engage voters.

The Security and Opportunity Agenda is an initiative that consists of a series of short, engaging publications putting forward policy ideas for addressing the most serious challenges facing the United States . Each brief provides an overview of the nature of the problem to be confronted, a summary of public opinion data about the issue, an explanation of the proposed solutions and evidence that they will work, and an estimate of the costs involved. The series is intended to offer journalists, congressional staffers, and others concerned with current policy debates a concise guide to the problem and a clearly stated idea for a solution. Other briefs in series will include:

• Helping Children Move from Bad Schools to Good Ones
• Getting More Bang for Each Health Care Dollar
• Strengthening the Economic Security of Americans
• Making the Tax System Fair and Simple
• Fixing the Federal Budget
• Extending Preschool to Everyone
• Restoring America ’s International Credibility
• Preventing the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction
• Renewing the Middle East Peace Process
• Reducing America ’s Oil Dependence

“Improving Voter Participation” and other briefs in the Security and Opportunity Agenda series are available online at www.tcf.org. Visit www.reformelections.org for more information about TCF’s work on election reform. Tova Wang is available for interviews about election reform and voter participation issues. For more information, contact Christy Hicks at [email protected] or (212) 452-7723.

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