Vote!

An alumnus who teaches political science at Grinnell is looking at why states have failed to enforce federal legislation meant to make it easier for Americans to register to vote.

Douglas Hess ’91, assistant professor of political science, sees it as a matter of civil rights.

The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) was enacted in 1993 to make voter registration easier and more uniform across states. It requires states to include voter registration when qualifying voters apply for social services or drivers’ licenses.

Two decades later, however, the NVRA is implemented unevenly from state to state. This poses problems for equal access to representation; millions of potential voters are currently unregistered.

Hess recently received a discretionary grant from the Carnegie Corp. of New York to study effective, low-cost strategies for states to better implement the NVRA.

“A lot of states don’t implement the law very well. Some parts of it they just flat out ignore, and even in states that try to implement it well, some of the counties don’t do it right. So we’re looking at ways to enforce the law,” Hess says.

Hess will conduct his research through field experiments, statistical analyses of agency data, and case studies.

Hess also has found ways to integrate Grinnell students into his research. In fall 2013, James Dowell ’15 read legal settlements between states and civil rights groups concerning the NVRA. Then he coded them for variations in content. In summer 2014, Ryan Hautzinger ’15 and Gwendolyn Ihrie ’15 will be working on a related Mentored Advanced Project.

Hess, a psychology major at Grinnell, previously worked with community and labor organizers in the United States. Later, he directed and advised civil rights and voting rights projects for various nonprofit organizations. He also worked in Haiti, and with Haitians in the United States, on human rights and pro-democracy projects in that nation. Hess has a master’s degree in policy studies from Johns Hopkins University, and a doctorate in public policy from George Washington University.