HOUSTON, Texas — Last week, the nation learned about True The Vote, a Houston-based tea party group that fans out to heavily-minority precincts and challenges voters’ ballots.

As they work to suppress voters this election, across town, a far different story was unfolding: scores of volunteers fanning out not to stop people from voting, but to help them vote.

ThinkProgress was on the ground for the first annual National Voter Registration Day, a nationwide event for grassroots groups to help register voters. (The day was designed to take place prior to October 6, when Texas and a handful of other states have their registration deadline.) We attended numerous events throughout the day, including a radio-hyped registration table outside a breakfast diner, a hip-hop concert where tickets were distributed to those who registered and/or pledged to vote, and a comedy show where the comic interspersed jokes with pleas for young folks to get out and vote.

Watch a short video with highlights from the day:

Last year, Texas passed some of the worst anti-voter legislation of any state in the country. They enacted a voter ID law, which allowed voters to bring a gun license to the polls but not a student ID; it has since been blocked by the Department of Justice. In addition, they are on the leading edge of states passing new, onerous restrictions on voter registration groups like the League of Women Voters.

Still, despite the new regulations making their job more difficult, voter registration groups were out in full force Tuesday, doing their best to get as many people as possible registered to vote.

Today is National Voter Registration Day. With little more than a month remaining until the elections, time is running out for new voters or voters who moved since the last election to register to vote this November. Voters who need a registration form from their home state can sign up for one here.

In honor of National Voter Registration Day, here are five important facts about elections in the United States for voters to bear in mind:

• American Voter Registration Rates Are Unusually Low: Approximately 68 percent of voting age Americans are registered to vote. That compares to 100 percent of Argentinians, 97 percent of Brits, 93 percent of Canadians and 77 percent of South Africans. As the Brennan Center explains, America does a poor job of registering voters because we place the burden of registering largely at the feet of the voters themselves, while most of our peer nations actively encourage voter registration. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) recently signed another potential path towards closing this registration gap — election day registration for new voters.
• Republicans Want To Make This Problem Worse: Republican officials like Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler both attempted voter purges this year seeking to kick even more people off the voter rolls. Both claimed these purges were justified to ensure that no non-citizens were voting, but purges uncovered virtually “no confirmed noncitizens.” Scott also signed an unconstitutional law making it harder to register new voters. Although a federal court eventually struck down the law, that was not until Democratic voter registration “all but [dried] up” in Florida.
• In-Person Voter Fraud Is Virtually Non-Existent: Republicans have also pushed so-called Voter ID laws, which potentially disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of low-income, elderly, minority and student voters. They claim these laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud at the polls, but, “a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit in-person voter fraud. One study of Wisconsin voters determined that just .00023 percent of votes are the product of in-person fraud.
• Republicans Want To Cut Early Voting Too: Republican officials, including lawmakers in crucial states like Ohio and Florida, have also tried to limit the number of days voters can cast an early ballot before the election day itself. Courts have given these laws a mixed reception.
• The Electoral College Makes No Sense: Finally, perhaps the most peculiar aspect of the American voting system is the Electoral College, which discourages candidates from campaigning in more than a handful of battleground states and sometimes allows the loser of the popular vote to become president. Several states embraced an effort to largely neutralize the Electoral College known as the National Popular Vote compact.

Three months after a federal judge blocked much of Florida’s year-old voter suppression law as an unconstitutional infringement on speech and voting rights, the same judge agreed Tuesday to permanently remove the restrictions on voter registration drives, pending final confirmation that a federal appeals court has dismissed the case. In a settlement, the civil rights groups challenging the law and the state agreed not to appeal the case.

HB 1355, enacted by the state legislature’s Republican majority and signed by Gov. Rick Scott (R) — went into effect last July, putting major new restrictions on groups who work to register new voters. The law imposed harsh new restrictions on third-party voter registration groups, requiring them to turn in completed registration forms 48 hours — to the minute — after completion, or face fines.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, in his May order, put the restrictions on hold, finding “the statute and rule impose burdensome record-keeping and reporting requirements that serve little if any purpose, thus rendering them unconstitutional even to the extent they do not violate the [National Voter Registration Act].”

Unfortunately, before the law was struck down, it had a clear effect: driving down voter registration numbers in Florida. The Florida Times-Union reported this week that Democratic voter registration in the state “all but [dried] up” in the wake of the law’s enactment.

Last July, a Florida voter suppression law — enacted by the state legislature’s Republican majority and signed by Gov. Rick Scott (R) — went into effect, putting major new restrictions on groups who work to register new voters. HB 1355 imposed harsh new restrictions on third-party voter registration groups, requiring them to turn in completed registration forms 48 hours — to the minute — after completion, or face fines. Though the bill was put on hold in late May by a federal judge, a new report shows the damage was done: Democratic voter registration in Florida ground to a virtual standstill.

In blocking the new law, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle wrote that HB 1355 would “impose burdensome record-keeping and reporting requirements that serve little if any purpose, thus rendering them unconstitutional even to the extent they do not violate the [National Voter Registration Act].” He granted an injunction, he wrote, because the bill could cause “irreparable harm.” When a voter-participation group “loses an opportunity to register a voter,” he noted, “the opportunity is gone forever.”

That lost opportunity over 11 months had a significant effect. The Florida Times-Union reports that over the 13-months period beginning July 1 of the year before elections in 2004 and 2008, the number of registered Democrats in Florida increased by an average of 209,425 voters. Since July 1, 2011 — the HB 1355 went into effect — that number was just 11,365:

Groups said the new rules made it impossible to comply. As a result, many got out of the registration game until a federal judge ruled in their favor at the end of May, 11 months later.

“It has without a doubt hurt registration numbers,” said Deirdre Macnab, president of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Florida. “It really gummed up the works and made it harder for Floridians to get registered.”

Macnab notes that the rule may have disproportionately hurt Democratic registration as groups often target areas that lean Democratic — “college campuses, senior centers and low-income communities.”

Combined with the Scott administration’s failed attempts attempts to reduce the number of hours for early voting and to purge citizens from the voter rolls, a clear pattern emerges.

Even with court intervention to stop apparently illegal voter suppression efforts like HB 1355, reports like this expose the “irreparable harm” already done to American democracy.

As voter suppression laws spread across the country, voting rights advocates can take heart: the biggest state in the nation is on the cusp of passing a major voter protection initiative.

Election Day Registration (EDR), which allows citizens to register up to and on Election Day, passed the California State Senate today by a party-line vote of 23-13. AB 1436 had passed the State Assembly in May 47-26.

Under current law, Californians cannot register to vote in the final two weeks before an election, just as many Americans are beginning to tune in. EDR will eliminate that deadline, ensuring that no citizen is disenfranchised because he or she wasn’t registered beforehand.

This won’t just benefit slackers. Historically-disenfranchised citizens like minorities and poorer Americans, will particularly benefit from EDR. On average, studies have found that EDR boosts voter turnout by seven percentage points. Common Cause’s Phillip Ung told ThinkProgress he “expects voter turnout to increase by the hundreds of thousands” solely as a result of EDR.

Eight states currently allow their citizens to register on Election Day: Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. California is poised to become the latest, and by far the largest, state to enact EDR.

California’s version of EDR differs slightly from the way it’s employed elsewhere. Rather than allowing citizens to register at regular polling stations, as they do in Maine, for instance, California will have Election Day registration at a county registrar’s office, where citizens will be able to vote as well.

The bill now returns to the Assembly for a concurrence vote — which is all but assured of passage — due to a small change in the Senate version before reaching Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) desk. Brown has not commented publicly on the bill, but has been very supportive of election reform efforts in the past and advocates expect he will sign the legislation.

AB 1436 also increases the fine for voter fraud to $50,000, one of the highest penalties in the country.

Assuming Brown signs the bill, it will not take effect until the next presidential election in 2016.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)’s today lashed out at his opponent’s daughter and his home state of Massachusetts for ensuring that a federal law is properly followed. The freshman Republican charged that by helping to signing up welfare recipients to vote, the state was “clearly” aiding Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren’s campaign.

The 1993 National Voter Registration Act — better known as the Motor Voter bill –requires that citizens be offered the opportunity to register to vote when they get a driver’s license or apply for social services. Voting rights groups — including Demos — filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was not in compliance, after a 35-year-old woman was not offered the chance to register to vote when she filed paperwork with the state’s welfare office last June. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, recognizing its obligation under federal law, settled the case out of court. As part of that settlement, the state government agreed to contact, by mail, the 477,944 welfare recipients who might also have been denied their right to be offered a chance to register to vote and give them that chance now.

Voting rights groups have brought similar suits in other states. But seizing on the fact that Warren’s daughter is chair of the board of one of the groups suing, Brown made the argument that this amounts to a conspiracy to elect his Democratic challenger. His statement today said:

I want every legal vote to count, but it’s outrageous to use taxpayer dollars to register welfare recipients as part of a special effort to boost one political party over another. This effort to sign up welfare recipients is being aided by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and it’s clearly designed to benefit her mother’s political campaign. It means that I’m going to have to work that much harder to get out my pro-jobs, pro-free enterprise message.

It is surprising that a U.S. Senator would object to a state complying with federal law and attempting to remedy its mistake when it may not have done so. It is also surprising that Brown would, in effect, say that having more eligible welfare recipients registered to vote would automatically mean more votes for Warren.

Brown says on his campaign website that “Partisan bickering and political gamesmanship won’t help us save that America, and I refuse to participate.”

With the recent felony conviction of then-Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (R), the task fell upon Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) to select a replacement for the chief elections officer of his state. Friday, he announced his pick: state Senator Connie Lawson (R).

Lawson, who served in the state senate since 1996 and as clerk of the Hendricks County Circuit Court for seven years before that, was one of the two original authors of Senate Bill 483. That law, enacted in 2005 and upheld by a divided U.S. Supreme Court in 2008, was among the nation’s first laws mandating strict photo identification requirements for voters.

Lawson’s concern about election integrity was also evident in another key vote — in 2010, she voted against the bill that made it legal for alcohol to be sold on election day in Indiana.

Along with Georgia, Indiana’s voter ID rules were the strictest in the nation until 2011 — making it significantly more difficult for voters without valid driver’s licenses to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Since the 2010 elections, Republican legislatures around the country, pushed by their allies at the right-wing corporate front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), have been passing similar laws in an organized “war on voting.” These measures, of course, disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters who are less likely to have valid photo identification — and, probably not coincidentally, are most likely to vote for Democratic candidates. Daniels himself signed Lawson’s bill into law; her co-author said at the time that it was needed to guard against voter fraud.

Actual cases of voting fraud are so rare that a voter is much more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls, though White proved to be the rare exception. He registered and voted in the wrong district, falsely claiming his ex-wife’s residence as his own. Lawson’s law and voter ID laws like it do nothing to prevent that kind of fraud. White had ironically campaigned on election integrity and a pledge to “protect and defend Indiana’s Voter ID law to ensure our elections are fair and protect the most basic and precious right and responsibility of our democracy-voting.”

Hopefully, at least Lawson will oversee the state’s voter suppression without the hypocrisy White demonstrated.