Yesterday, the Justice Department announced an agreement (PDF) to bring Arizona's Department of Economic Security, which administers Food Stamps and TANF, into compliance with the public agency registration provisions of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).  The agreement comes three months after Project Vote and Demos sent  Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer a notice letter
(PDF) advising her that the state was not in compliance with the law
and asking her to take steps to improve compliance to avoid litigation.

The agreement is the first time in six years that the Justice
Department has enforced the NVRA's public agency registration
provision. Previously, the Department's NVRA priority had been to press states to purge their voters rolls,
taking advantage of th law's narrow language requiring states to make a
general effort to keep their voter rolls current and accurate. The
Department's enforcement priority of purges over enfranchisement drew considerable media attention and became tied to the U.S. Attorney scandal as more evidence of the politicization of DOJ during the Bush administration.

In recent months, Congress has focused its attention on states'
noncompliance with the NVRA's public agency registration provisions and
DOJ's sparse enforcement history. Recent letters by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and five colleagues (PDF) from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and from Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, (PDF) who chairs the Subcommittee on Elections, were preceded by a hearing on states' compliance with the NVRA and a hearing on voter suppression"
by House Committee on the Judiciary, which featured a heated exchange
between Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz and the Deputy Assistant
Attorney General for Civil Rights.

In February, Project Vote and Demos released a detailed report, Unequal Access, (PDF) that documented the steep decline in registrations from public assistance agencies over the past 12 years.