After our New Voters Project registered more than 500,000 voters in 2004—most of them young and first-time voters—several states adopted onerous regulations and restrictions for civic organizations that run voter registration drives. U.S. PIRG, our national federation, has joined a lawsuit against the state of New Mexico to stop that state’s law from going into effect and to prevent a precedent that could lead to restrictive bills being passed here in Georgia.

The restrictions are meant to discourage organizations from engaging in registration efforts, and include limits on the number of forms given to a single civic group, unreasonable deadlines for returning the forms, steep fines for honest mistakes and other obstacles.

Legal analysts say the new rules violate the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. New Mexico is the third state to take similar action, following Florida and Ohio. A decision is expected in June 2008.

Georgia’s congressional delegation helped pass a comprehensive higher education reform bill that included policies championed by Georgia PIRG.

If approved by the Senate, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act will help students and their parents find better deals on expensive textbooks. Under the bill, publishers would provide the price of textbooks when they market them to faculty and sell their textbooks “unbundled” from costly workbooks and CD-ROMS. Schools would provide book lists earlier to allow students and parents to shop around. The bill also requires private lenders to clearly disclose the rates and terms of student loans, and requires lenders and colleges to notify students about their options to borrow more affordable federal student loans.

On March 11, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to set up an independent office to police ethical scandals under a plan recommended by a special task force and endorsed by Georgia PIRG. We applauded Reps. Barrow, Bishop, Johnson, Lewis, Marshall and Scott for fulfilling a promise to clean up Congress.

In January of 2007, the House approved strong Georgia PIRG-backed rules designed to curb the influence of lobbyists over members of Congress. The rules banned lobbyist-paid gifts and travel and required lobbyists to disclose fundraising for candidates. The House put off a decision on how to enforce the rules for most of 2007, setting up a task force to examine the options. U.S. PIRG’s Gary Kalman urged Rep. Michael Capuano (Mass.), the head of the task force, to recom¬mend a truly independent office, one that would end the current practice of “self-policing” that let lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others shower members of Congress with favors for years before the Justice Department brought him down.

U.S. PIRG’s report profiling the state commissions was cited in congressional testimony.