judicial preclearance for those changes. and both the texas id and the florida matter remains on going. i can assure you that in this and every submission, our review will be thorough, fair and fact-based. states covered by section 5 as you probably know bear the burden of showing that the proposed changes are not intentionally discriminatory and will not have a retrogressive effect. as our attorney has emphasized where they meet this burden we will preclear the changes and where they do not we will object. another critical part of our work is defending the constitutionality of section 5 and we remain firmly committed to that effort. and as our experience, recent and in years past demonstrates, section 5 continues to play a vital role in upholding equal opportunity and equal access to the franchise by stopping discriminatory voting changes from going into effect whether

it's at a statewide level, a county level or city level. there are some who contend that section 5 is overinclusive, however, those jurisdictions with a clean record of nondiscrimination have the opportunity to bail out from section 5 coverage. our bailout practice has expanded in the aftermath of the 2009 northwest austin decision. in the past fiscal year, more bailouts were granted than in the previous seven years combined. i expect this activity will continue. let me turn briefly to our section 5 work. section 5 is a critical component of our enforcement efforts as well. the release of our census redistricting data in the new american community survey data always spurs our investigative work each decade under section 2. we're reviewing the data from the various jurisdictions across the country, considering whether the methods of electing governmental bodies dilute minority voting strength under the thornburg versus jingles

framework. we've opened up roughly 100 section 2 investigations in the past year. usually the cases involve challenges to at large methods of election and the usual remedy that we seek, although not in every case is the election using single member districts. one of the most recent of these cases to be resolved came in august when the second circuit dismissed an appeal from the settlement of a case in port chester. let me turn, because i know there are a lot of questions about our language minority provisions. several sections of the voting rights act voi protections to members of language minority groups so as to ensure they will be able to participate equally with english-speaking voters in the electoral tprocess. it develops investigations across the country that concern limited english proficient hispanic, asian, native american

and native alaskan voters. we've brought a number of cases under the language minority provisions of the voting rights act in recent years. and the work has quite iterally stretched from coast to coast. the most recent case was in alameda county in california. we've also done work in indiana countries, shannon county, south dakota. we've done work in new mexico for voters who are speaking native american languages and recently we did work in cuyahoga county, metropolitan cleveland as well as lorain county, ohio for voters who are spanish-speaking puerto rican voters. the census bureau as you know released the new determinations of language minority coverage of section 203 of the voting rights act. th they did so in 2011. one of the very strong messages you delivered a year ago was to try and get those determinations out as early as possible so that jurisdictions can have the time

to prepare. and we heard you and i hope we have given you the requisite time that you need to get the job done. because i know it's an important job. i know there are transitions. i was a local elected official. i remember in my county the year i ran for office was the first year they were subject to the bilingual ballots, provisions and there was undeniably a lot of transition involved in that effort. and so we heard you and we worked very closely with the census bureau to make sure this was done in a timely fashion. as you probably know, there are now 19.2 million voting age citizens from language minority groups that reside in covered jurisdictions compared with 13.4 in the previous determination. so that's roughly 42%, almost 43% increase. we've sent letters to the covered jurisdictions and are doing additional outreach to all of the newly covered jurisdictions. if you have any questions about

those issues, i welcome that discussion and we have a cadre of very seasoned attorneys who are very, very happy to work collaboratively with you. let me talk briefly about the nvra. the enforcement of the requirements of the nvra remains a very important priority for you. for us and for all of us in this room. because as you know, states covered by the nvra must follow its requirements to make voter registration available to applicants at all driver's license agencies at public assistance offices, disability offices and through the mail. and we have for the first time, i believe, in our section's history last year, may have been late 2010, early 2011, we put out guidance on our website that discusses all of the requirements of the nvra. we heard a lot of feedback from election directors, secretaries of state and other external stakeholders that it would be useful to have a guidance

document that can serve as a how-to document for everybody. on compliance. now, as we figure out where to focus our investigative resources, we pay a lot of attention to the eac data. and the eac's nvra report is very, very helpful in enabling us to figure out where we should indeed focus our initial investigative efforts. let me tell you about the work we've been doing. in the last year, the department brought its first two lawsuits under section 7 in seven years. and as you know, section 7 requires that voter registration materials be made available at, among other places, state offices providing public assistance or disability services. one of the lawsuits involved rhode island and the other involves louisiana. in the rhode island case, we reached an immediate resolution to the matter. and i want to discuss the results, because the results

have indeed been remarkable. more voters were registered in the first month after the settlement than in the entire previous two-year reporting period. let me give you some specific numbers. in the two-year reporting period before the lawsuit, 457 voter registration forms were submitted by the four affected rhode island social service agencies. in the first month after the agreement 1,048 forms were received. in the ensuing two months, a total of 1,787 forms were received. this is a total of 4,171 newly registered voters in the four months after the settlement as opposed to 457 in the two-year reporting period before the settlement. this nine-fold increase is remarkable. and illustrates the critical importance of section 7. i want to commend and thank the

officials in rhode island for their cooperation throughout this case. we worked very collaboratively to fix the problem rather than fixing the blame. i'm very grateful for their collaborative efforts in this matter. i always say that the best policing is the policing that comes from within. i would urge all of us to conduct these sorts of self-assessments on the nvra front to ensure that all of the covered agencies are indeed in full compliance. we had a very interesting and productive meeting friday with the election directors. and one of the observations that was made by at least two and i forgot how many exactly of the election directors was they're starting to see more problems in departments of motor vehicles. and so i wanted to share that feedback with you and would love to brainstorm with you on how to ensure that we are doing our level best to carry out the nvra's very important directives which we all have a shared interest in carrying out.

let me talk about this now, i remember vividly the conversations about uacova and the move act. we all have an interest in this. the first cycle after a bill is passed is undeniably a challenging cycle. because it's the first time something's gone into effect. i appreciate very much the efforts of everybody in this room in seeking to comply with the move act in 2010. i also appreciate the efforts of our dedicated career staff in the civil rights division who spent remarkable amounts of tim new provisions and working with many of you in this room and many of you who were in the room on friday. we've done a lot of outreach in the period since 2010. many of you with special elections and early primaries this year have already heard from us in our uacava work and

the rest of you will be hearing from us as your primaries approach. since the enactment of the move act, a number of states moved their primary election dates further out from the general election date in federal election years to ensure that the ballots can be timely transmitted. we appreciate those efforts, because that was obviously one of the biggest challenges we encountered. you may have seen we filed a motion for additional relief in our case against new york. which had a late primary date and failed to get a number of thousands of ballots out on time in 2010 and then failed to move its primary date further out from the general election. and just last friday, three days ago, the judge in that case issued an order moving the primary date to june 26th. following the 2010 election cycle we conducted a careful review of our nationwide experience. we had conversations with the host of stake holers, including people on the hill, including people in this room, including

people that were in the room friday. and as a result, we have prepared a package of proposed legislative reforms we're happy to share with you. the train has not even remotely gotten ready to leave the station. the reason i wanted to tell you about that is so that we could have the discussion in the weeks and months ahead to address the concerns that you have. one of the most frequently heard concerns both last year and in the months since my visit here a year ago was the frustration that some of you in the room feel toward our civil rights division enforcement. and the concern that i heard was that the doj, civil rights division was trying to hold states accountable for mir which you feel that you have little or no control. and i very much appreciate that concern.

and at the same time, i would respectfully call our attention to the language of the statutes itself. uacava and the move act and for that matter, the nvra create responsibilities and refer to states. states shall, states shall. and by comparison, section 203 refers to states or political subdivisions which is why our action is not against the state of california, it's against alameda county. and so that is -- i very much appreciate the frustration that was expressed a year ago. regarding situations where, perhaps, counties or cities or other subdivisions were remiss in some of their obligations. but it has been the department's long-standing practice under both republican and democratic administrations under statutes such as uacava and now the move act and nvra to hold states

acouldn't theable in these statutory contexts. and, again, this practice is based on the plain language of the statute. i certainly look forward to continuing this conversation with you, because i'm going to guess that the frustration has not abated. i figured i'd get one laugh line. i wanted to pro-actively front and acknowledge those concerns. and make sure you know we're very willing to engage in dialogue but recognizing that we start with the plain language of the congressional edicts. i look forward to that conversation. i want to get to the question and answer part because that's always the, for me, the most interesting and educational part of this, but let me spend a

brief moment here. we send observers from the office of personnel management out into the field to monitor elections around the country throughout the election calendar. and these are elections for federal, state and local office. we had a big presence around the country in the 2010 election. overall in 2010 we monitored 56 elections in 45 jurisdictions in 19 states. the job of these observers is simply to monitor the elections. for violation of federal voting rights laws. and they report back to d.o.j. supervisory attorneys and when we encounter concerns, we get in touch with you promptly to talk about them and we'll continue to do that. that was a large data dump of what we have been up to. the upshot is we're as busy as we've ever been across a variety of fronts. i am very grateful to have the dedicated career professionals in the civil rights division in the voting section, who are burning the candle at every

which end. if you want to learn more about the cases that we filed and the guide answer that i mentioned to you, www.justice.gov/crt/voting. all of those documents i referenced are on website. or you can call us directly in the voting section or the front office of the civil rights division, 514-2151 and i would be happy to talk to you. i believe we have so much in common, we have the shared interest in ensuring that the access to the ballot for all qualified voters is indeed a right and a right that's in full force. through our joint efforts i think we can get there. thank you for your time. i would love to entertain any questions you might have. if you don't mind, i might get a glass of water beforehand. thank you very much.

>> yes, sir. >> thank you, jason gant of south dakota. we have, you mentioned shannon county, an indian reservation in our state that of course we require preclearance on all of our legislation and everything. but i wanted to make sure i was understanding you correctly when you mentioned election monitoring. of course i was elected in 2010, so i didn't experience how everything went down when your observers were in our state observing the election. but i want to make sure that come the 2012 election, should the department of justice decide to, again, come visit the great state of south dakota, i'd welcome everyone to visit south dakota, but that you're going to be cooperating and notifying my

office as well as the local election officials to make sure that everyone is on the same page on what activities you're going to be involved in so that, should there be an issue, that we become aware of that we may require your assistance or vice versa, that we have that open line of communication ready and available prior to election day. >> i completely agree and i look forward to that. chris herring, i asked chris to come with me today. because chris is the chief of the voting section and in that capacity, among other things, he oversees our election day monitoring program. he would, chances are, you might be getting a call from chris or somebody else in the section. >> can i follow up on just that part? >> yes, sir. >> secretary of state, mississippi. in that regard, i have spoke within chris before. we've never gotten feedback for what you get when you go out. i mean, you've been to

mississippi many times. and many of the other states that you list here, but we never get a report as to what you find or what the issues are. i wondered if those would be available to us when you complete your investigation and why not? >> let me turn to chris. you can hear directly from chris. >> mr. secretary, we will try to do better in that regard. we do try very hard to give feedback to local jurisdictions after we've monitored. we'll try hard to loop your service in in the future to make sure you know what we're seeing. >> one other follow-up before -- >> sure. >> and chris, thank you for meeting with us when we were in washington. appreciate it. very informative. we appreciate that. subsequent to our meeting, south carolina's voting i.d. was rejected. and you all wrote a letter rejecting their application. in that letter you indicated one of the salient points was the

difference in minorities having driver's license versus nonminority driver's license. i think the deviation was relatively small, maybe about 2% or so. as i recall looking at that letter, it appeared to me that was the only real statistical data that you based your letter on. first, is that correct? and could you tell us how important the discrimination between minority having a driver's license and a nonminority having a driver's license, what weight that was given? that was the only one that was really in your objection letter. >> i can't get into the deliberations other than what is in the public record, because as you know, it remains a pending matter. every particular submission is going to be fact specific. and what is the linchpin in any of these submissions is that the state has the burden of demonstrating the absence of

discriminatory intent or retrogressive effect. as you correctly note, we did have access to data in south carolina that was noted in the letter pertaining to issuance of driver's license desegregated by race. that was one of the issues that was cited, although not the only issue that was cited. >> i know these are specific to each one. what would be matters you consider critical? that was one you felt strongly enough to put in the letter, which is public. but which other ones for those of our states who are trying to meet the section 5 requirements? what else would you consider to be important in the statistical information? >> again, we take a wholistic look at the process to see if the covered jurisdiction has met its burden. in this particular case it would be a state, has met the burden

of the absence of discriminatory purpose. we will gather the entire legislative record to determine what were the contemporaneous statements that were made. i would direct you to the village of arlington heights, the supreme court decision, which is that outlines that the factors that are looked at when you're considering whether there's a potential issue of discriminatory intent. and we will, again, as you've seen in the south carolina context, we will be looking at all the data that the state looked at in making its determination and then we will apply the facts to the law in the given case. every state is different. every submission is different. and that's why we take that very fact specific approach. >> well, i'll stop because there are 49 others here.

the same when we looked at that information concerning the move act, we did have the opportunity to go to afghanistan as todd indicated, spoke earlier along with the secretary of state from california, pennsylvania, florida and indiana. all went. we're very strong proponents of making sure that military votes -- i doubt if there's anyone in this room that's not. >> i completely agree with you on that. >> that being said, we do not control the counties. when you say the states are responsible, that's correct. and none of us are the state's leading official. the governor would be in that case. where we have attempted to have working relationships with your organization in order to have problem counties do the work, it seems that we get blamed for that when, if you're going to hold the states specific, you should hold the governor specific or the individual counties, not those people that are trying very hard to meet the

act. and i can assure you, we spend hours, untold days to try to meet the act. when we have a county fail, it's just as big to us. when you come and hold the secretary of states responsible for something they're not legally able to do and we don't represent the state. i would encourage you, if you're going to hold a state terrific, you start with the governor. >> i appreciate that point and, again, i also appreciate the situation and i noted it in my remarks, the frustration from the plain language of move act which says you're responsible and the frequent realities on the ground. i think there are something like 11,000 jurisdictions across the country, if you add them all up, that administer elections. and congress, in its wisdom, made the judgment about who is accoune. with you and continuing to work with everyone around this table so that we have a little bit of luxury of time now.

the move act was passed in '09 and we immediately had to pivot into implementation phase. and now we have the benefit of that experience where we know, at least in part, where some of the particular problems occurred. and so we continue, we look forward to continuing the dialogue with you and your staff. and anyone else in this room so that we can, hopefully, prevent history from repeating itself to the extent that there were problems in particular jurisdictions. >> we're running a little bit behind. i know a couple of secretaries had a couple of questions. i saw secretary kovach and gardner. maybe we could take them in that order. >> sure. >> this is chris kovach of kansas. i have a question about the letter and decision. the department of justice preclearance decisions like all executive branch actions are bound by supreme court case law. i don't want to get into your internal deliberations. i'm just curious, as a legal matter, how you get around this

one sentence in crawford versus marion county board of elections which is a 6-3 decision issued by justice stevens in 2008. he said in this one sentence, for most voters who need them, the inconvenience of making a trip to the bureau of motor vehicle, gathered the required documents does not represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting, end quote. i'm trying to assess the department's decision. how can a -- if the burdenen is not of constitutional significance as justice stevens has held or the court has held, how can a predicted difference in that burden among various racial categories be of legal significance under section 5 if the court has already ruled that this increased burden has no significance? >> we will be addressing that matter in the court proceedings and, again, as i said, each case is fact-specific. under section 5 the burden rests

with the state to determine the absence of discriminatory purpose and discriminatory effect. crawford was not a section 5 case. so we will undoubtedly have the conversation to which you are referring to in court. i suspect that you and i may have an honest and respectful but pretty serious difference of opinion. yes, sir. >> puerto rico. since 1952 puerto rico has had two-member senate districts. in general philosophical terms should we be considering to moving to one-member districts or keep the two-member districts? >> you know, i think that's a question for you and governor and as you know, i've spend a fair amount of time with the governor on another matter. >> other issues. >> unrelated to voting. so i would not feel comfortable opining on which i think will be a decision for the residents of the commonwealth. >> okay. >> secretary gardner.

>> were there any locations that you monitored in the 2010 election that were selected by random? >> by random? no. >> secretary mcdonough, do you have a quick question? >> yes, following up on exchanges, i understand the back and forth about the statute that holds the state responsible, have you all or the administration considered changing the statute to hold the responsible election of the response to election authority responsible on the move? >> i think that would be up to congress and as you move forward, mr. secretary, whom i know pretty well from a prior life -- you may want to consider that >> what will the department and the administration think of it? >> i can't speak for the department now because that hasn't been floated. >> sure. >> i would simply note, i'm

reading from the testimony, the floor testimony on the bill. the move act does not, here's a quote from the congressional record, the move act does not intend to and does not in fact take administrative control of military and overseas voting out of the hands of local officials. compliance with moves mandates ultimately remains a state's responsibility and states will continue to be the main entity against which the provisions of move and uacava will be enforced should enforcement by the department of justice become necessary. >> and in fairness, too, for instance in maryland, the state took responsibility just for that activity just to ensure, you know, we passed a law in the general assembly to avoid this, which is also an alternative. because everybody i think has got right on their side here, they want to enforce the law, we want to comply with the law, but it's the mechanics of it. and one way or another, rather than talk about it, if we can

resolve the mechanics, it might make the issue go away. >> again, i look forward to further conversations with all of you on that issue because i do think it is a big issue and we all have a shared interest in doing the right thing and we all have a job to do and i think that's what can bring us together. yes, sir. >> quick question. we're trying to change our law in alaska to move our primary back, not because we can't make the deadline now but we can't make the 45-day deadline if there's a challenge to a primary result. we may not be able to get it done this year, we'll see, but we don't have that many contestants in statewide races. >> you have had some -- >> we have had some in the past. >> i do recall history. >> yes. the question i have, i'll be meeting with local election officials shortly. is it your view that this prevents a municipal jurisdiction having a ten-day runoff after a close election