How did the idea for a Motor Voter law originate?
Jo-Anne Chasnow: Back in 1982, the two founders of Human SERVE, Frances Fox Piven, a City University of New York political science professor, and Richard A. Cloward, a Columbia University social work professor, wanted to create a way to make it easier for poor people in this country to register to vote (they are disproportionately under-registered). Their idea was to encourage the nonprofit agencies around the country like day care centers and community health centers to offer voter registration to each person who came to use their agency services. This became the seed for the concept of “agency-based” voter registration. The idea grew to include public agencies, specifically welfare agencies. So Human SERVE began working with cities, counties and states to encourage voter registration in welfare agencies. But we ran into lots of resistance, as these jurisdictions were not really interested in targeting this idea to poor people’s agencies. Hence, we included drivers’ license offices wh
