Title: Protecting the Freedom to Vote | Demos
Headings: Protecting the Freedom to Vote
Protecting the Freedom to Vote
The Voter Empowerment Act of 2012
Introduction

Content: Eligible Americans should never find themselves shut out of the system and denied the right to participate in choosing their government representatives because of bureaucratic error. Yet a Cooperative Congressional Election Study by Harvard Professor Stephen Ansolabehere reported that in the 2008 election 2 to 3 million registered voters were prevented from voting because of registration or other administrative problems, and 9 million eligible Americans were not registered because of residency rules or registration deadlines. 8 Reportedly, the number of people barred from voting in 2008 exceeded the popular vote margin of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. 9 The study concluded that “registration continues to create significant barriers to getting into the electoral system and to voting on Election Day.” 10
Anyone can get caught up in the red tape and find their freedom to vote impinged upon. Former U.S. Representative Lincoln Davis knows something about elections and government, yet this year when he went to polls in his hometown where he’d been voting since 1995, he was denied the right to vote. “We walked in and they told me I was not a registered voter. I had been taken off the list . . . These are people who I grew up with. I told them I live here.