Study Finds Most NYC Agencies Ignoring Voter Registration Law

A study by a Manhattan University, or MU, professor found that most New York City agencies are ignoring a law requiring them to offer voter registration to the public.

The report, “Missed Opportunities: NYC Agency-Based Voter Registration,” by political-science professor Dr. Margaret Groarke, showed that most city agencies are failing to carry out the city’s 2014 Pro-Voter Law, which requires 26 departments to offer registration forms to every eligible person they serve.

“The idea is that city agencies will engage [with New Yorkers], and it’s a good opportunity to update the Board of Elections about your address or register to vote,” Groarke said. “I wanted to look into how well this program was working.”

Groarke, a political science professor at Manhattan University, worked on the study with undergraduate Ishaan Jani, a political science major. The pair analyzed nearly a decade of agency reports submitted to the Mayor’s Office of Operations and discovered widespread non-compliance and little oversight.

“We were surprised by how little accountability there is,” the 20-year-old said. “When agencies don’t submit reports or send in zero registrations, nothing really happens. It’s like the law exists on paper, but not in practice.”

The city’s Pro-Voter Law was modeled after the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires motor vehicle offices to offer voter registration when residents renew their licenses. New York City expanded that idea to local agencies ranging from Parks and Recreation to the Department of Health, reasoning that most residents interact with at least one public office each year.

Yet Groarke found that few departments follow through. 

“The law requires all of the agencies to move toward incorporating voter registration into their regular application form,” she said. “Almost nobody has done it effectively.”

The Human Resources Administration, which manages public-assistance programs, is the only agency that fully integrates voter registration into its application. In 2024, it registered more than 15,000 New Yorkers, far more than any other department. 

The Department of Youth and Community Development followed with 7,160, and the Department of Correction registered 1,325. Fifteen agencies failed to submit even one completed registration form last year.

“The most successful thing is to incorporate the voter-registration application into whatever forms for services the agency has,” Groarke said. 

Other effective approaches, she added, include training staff to ask clients directly and embedding digital registration links into online intake forms.

Jani analyzed agency data for several months and found stark differences in engagement among departments. 

Parks and Recreation once ran voter-registration drives and canvassed in East Harlem, but has since halted the effort. The Department of Corrections, on the other hand, ramped up its outreach through partnerships with Legal Aid and other advocacy groups.

Overall, the study found that agencies engaging the public directly — through mailings, events or built-in digital prompts — produced significantly higher registration numbers than those relying on passive methods, like leaving forms on a counter or posting a link online.

“There was a one-year spurt in how much registration happened in 2016,” Groarke said. “After that, it fell off. The idea of the reporting requirement was that somebody would notice and say, ‘Look, the agencies are not doing what we told them to do.’ But I don’t think anybody has really evaluated this until we did.”

According to the CUNY Center for Urban Research, roughly 1.3 million eligible New Yorkers remain unregistered, about a quarter of the city’s voting-age population.

 For the MU research team, that figure further underscores a critical need for enforcement.

 “I don’t think these agencies have necessarily felt that anyone is expecting them to do this,” she said. “If no one is paying attention to whether they do it or not, why would they, unless they were super committed to democracy?”

The report recommends that the mayor and City Council use the twice-yearly agency reports to hold departments accountable and focus efforts on those with the most public contact.

It also calls for adding voter-registration questions to online applications and providing consistent staff training. Reducing the number of mandated agencies, Groarke said, could make compliance more realistic.

“Some designated agencies have minimal contact with the public, making it challenging for them to register many voters,” the report notes. “Focusing on fewer agencies and helping them do more effective registration might be more productive.”

The MU professor hopes city leaders will take notice and hold them accountable.

“We often pay a lot of attention to passing a law,” she said. “But a law is no good if it’s not being enforced. “We have more than a million people in New York City who aren’t registered. That’s a lot of voices we’re missing.”