Conditional Commitment to Political Equality: Race, Class and State Compliance with Section 7 of the NVRA.

The political disengagement of the poor poses an enduring challenge to the integrity of American democracy. In 1993, Congress attempted to address this problem by passing Section 7 of the National Voting Registration Act (NVRA), which requires that all public assistance agencies provide beneficiaries with the opportunity to register to vote. Since the passage of this legislation, compliance with Section 7 has declined steadily and has exhibited marked variation across the American states. This paper draws on federal administrative data as well as census and other contextual information to explain the reasons for such patterns. Times series cross-sectional analyses reveal that state level configurations of race and class are key determinants of section 7 implementation. Moreover, these findings reflect a combination of top-down (stemming from political elites) and bottom-up (stemming from street-level bureaucrats) influences. The paper concludes by considering the broader implications of non-compliance with Section 7 and assessing the appropriate policy tools for combatting states' tendencies towards conditional commitment to the political equality of marginal groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]