In order to ensure even wider enrollment, the NVRA provides for voter registration by mail. Congress included several anti-purge provisions within the NVRA to ensure that once citizens are registered to vote, they remain on the voting list as long as they are eligible. The statute's list maintenance provisions prohibit states from removing names from the voter registration list for failure to vote or for change of address to another location within the registrar's jurisdiction. Because of its inherently political nature, there has been substantial litigation involving the National Voter Registration Act. Eleven states were brought to federal court by both the private bar and the Department of Justice to force implementation of the law.
NVRA cases are also pending in California, Michigan, Mississippi and Pennsylvania.
The NVRA in New York New York State law designates 14 state agencies with approximately 1,715 sites to participate in NVRA activities. To its credit, New York designated a broad range of discretionary agencies, making it one of the more far-reaching plans in the nation. New York also took the initiative to create a dual registration form for agency registration. Dual forms facilitate the registration process by incorporating voter registration into the agency forms. A recent New York State Board of Elections Monthly Report states that there were a total of 791,361 new registrations since the NVRA went into effect and 150,528 total new registrations to date for the year 1997.