PLI Bulletin

Online Registration, Debt Collection, Coronavirus Resources and More

Posted on May 6, 2020

Online Voter Registration Act: Forty states now allow online registration, something that is essential during a pandemic. The states that do not provide online registration are: AR, ME, MS, MT, NH, NC, ND, SD, TX and WY. The Online Voter Registration Act allows qualified citizens to register to vote, change their address, and otherwise update voter information through an Internet website.

Vote-by-mail is the answer: For many Americans, vote-by-mail will be a matter of life and death come November. It will be impractical, and in many places impossible, to safely conduct the election in 2020 unless voting on Election Day is greatly reduced. Mailed-in ballots are the most practical way to minimize in-person voting, making it possible to implement the social distancing and sanitizing necessary to resist spreading infection. For more, read the latest IdeaLog, our blog intended to raise eyebrows and engage minds.

GovLove – A Podcast About Local Government: This is a series of hundreds of podcasts from Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL), the most recent of which focus on how to operate different parts of local government during the pandemic. See the list of podcasts here.

How Debt Collectors Are Transforming the Business of State Courts: About one in four civil law cases in state courts are for debt collection, a rate that has more than doubled over twenty years. The Pew Center has a new report that describes the problem and suggests solutions.

Here’s Where the Gender Pay Gap Has Been Shrinking the Fastest Over the Last Decade: LendEDU analyzed data from the Census Bureau to rank how well cities and states shrank the gender pay gap from 2010 to 2018. (FYI, WY, CT, DE, AR and NY made the most progress.)

A wide range of coronavirus resources on the PLI website: The past six editions of the PLI Bulletin have offered a variety of bills, resolutions, podcasts and reports to help you deal with the pandemic. Access the entire archive of past PLI Bulletins here.