Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita really wants Hoosiers to believe he cares deeply about the integrity of the voting process. In October, just days before the 2008 election, the Republican sent a letter to federal, state, and local authorities asking for a criminal investigation into over 1,400 suspicious voter registration forms submitted by the group ACORN in Lake County. Despite convincing evidence to the contrary, he claimed (PDF) that ACORN was undertaking a massive voter fraud campaign that would “dilute the voice of honest voters and render an inaccurate tally on Election Day.”

Maybe Rokita should have spent less time demonizing community groups and more time ensuring all Indiana residents have access to the polls. In the run-up to the election, we thoroughly documented how Rokita stood idly by while a legitimate voter suppression battle developed in Lake County. Now the voting rights group Project Vote has accused him of failing to guarantee that Indiana is in compliance with the national Motor Voter law:

Citing clear evidence that hundreds of thousands of low-income Indiana residents have illegally been denied the opportunity to register to vote, today the voting rights groups Project Vote and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) sent a pre-litigation notice letter to Secretary of State Todd Rokita calling on him to bring Indiana into compliance with a federal law, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), that requires public assistance agencies offer voter registration services to their clients. [...]

According to evidence cited in the notice letter, the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) is now almost completely disregarding this law. By 2005-2006, registrations through public assistance agencies in Indiana had fallen more than 90 percent, to a mere 6,000. A November 2008 Project Vote survey of a number of FSSA offices and clients in Marion and Lake counties found that none of the offices were providing voter registration applications to their clients, and nearly all had no voter registration forms on their premises. None of the benefits applications collected during the investigation included the required registration materials, and none of the clients interviewed said they had been offered an opportunity to register to vote.

Project Vote reports that Indiana’s registration rate for low-income voters (just over 50 percent) is the fourth-worst in the nation. If the group’s allegations are accurate, Rokita should take swift action to alleviate the problem. Even if it means more black folks may show up at the polls.