Bradbury Pays Penny Apiece for Old Voter Registration Cards

Bill Bradbury receives a literacy award in 2004 from Bonnie King, Statesman Journal's past NIE Manager.

(Salem) - Secretary of State Bill Bradbury today announced the release of new voter registration cards, and a program to collect old voter registration cards and benefit schools.

The Secretary of State will pay each Oregon public K-12 school one penny for every old voter registration card it collects. An easy way to tell the difference between the old and the new voter registration cards is that the new cards have a bar code on them, while the old cards do not. Old voter registration cards collected by schools can be from phone books, donations from voter registration organizations (such as students, unions, and nonprofits), or anywhere else that old voter registration cards may be found.

"I call on Oregonians to bring old voter registration cards to their favorite Oregon public school, and I will pay each school one penny for every old registration card it collects," said Bradbury. "This is an easy way to provide a few extra pennies for Oregon education, while making sure that voter registrations are accurate and up-to-date."

Bradbury estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of old voter registration cards in circulation in Oregon, which could mean up to $10,000 for Oregon schools. While this won't solve our school funding problem, it will provide a few extra dollars for necessary school supplies. The penny-per-card payments will use federal Help America Vote Act funds and not state funds.

Under the federal Help America Vote Act, voter registration cards are now required to ask for a registrant's Oregon driver's license number, or, if they do not have a driver's license, the last four digits of their social security number. If a registrant does not have either a driver's license or a social security number, they may still register to vote by providing a copy of other forms of identification.

In order to comply with this new federal requirement, the Secretary of State has updated Oregon's voter registration cards and provided spaces for registrants to fill in this identification information. Because the old registration cards do not provide space for the required identification information, Secretary Bradbury is collecting those old registration cards so that they will no longer be used. New voter registration cards are available from the Secretary of State's Elections Division.

In cooperation with the Department of Education and Oregon's County Clerks, Bradbury asks anyone with old voter registration cards to turn them in to their favorite Oregon public K-12 school. No later than February 28, 2006, the schools will report the number of old registration cards collected to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State will then pay each school one penny for every old voter registration card it collects.