The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, commonly referred to as the motor voter act, sought to address the low number of registered voters. The Committee on House Administration (CHA) found many things that discouraged voter participation, including, but not limited to, the poll tax, literacy tests, residency requirements, selective purges, elaborate administrative procedures and annual reregistration requirements. However, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed some of the obvious voting impediments (such as literacy tests and residency requirements). Yet registration reform remained a key issue because voter registration was still extremely low. The committee reported that “public opinion polls…indicate that the failure to become registered is the primary reason given by eligible citizens for not voting. It is generally accepted that over 80 percent of those citizens who are registered vote in Presidential elections. However, according to figures provided by the Congressional Research Service, only slightly over 60 percent of the eligible voters are registered” (3). As such, there was a huge drive to increase the number of registered voters in an attempt to increase the number of participatory voters.

Previous to this act, many social services agencies used volunteers in order to try to increase the number of registered voters, particularly in segments of the population that did not typically register. Yet this laudable attempt failed because the task was so huge. “In sum, volunteer voter registration campaigns were not equal to registering the vast numbers of unregistered. The numbers reached depended not on the vastness of the pool but on campaign resources, and campaigns among the better-off attracted more resources. Consequently, campaigns could not less class and racial skews. The conclusion followed that to register minorities and the less well-off enmass, an institutional solution was needed” (Piven and Cloward,170). In the early 1990’s, many different bills regarding voter registration were proposed.

One of the primary goals of this bill was to make voter registration more convenient and easier to navigate. Thirty states had mail-in registration and about 25 states had some form of motor-voter registration (CHA 27). Piven and Cloward report “Department of Transportation data showing that even in the 13 percent of American households without vehicles, 92.5 percent had one or more drivers, and others had photo IDs ... They estimated, then, that 90 percent of the electorate had licenses or IDs, and the “remaining 10 percent included substantial numbers of disabled persons, many of whom cannot drive” (233). As such, and partially based on research in Michigan (most similar program to the one found in the bill), motor voter programs “could potentially increase the present registration level from…65 percent to 91 percent” (Piven and Cloward, 238).