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Voter Lists and Databases
By Adam Skaggs – 10/07/08
The
voter registration deadlines of most states have either just passed or will come in the next two weeks, and there has been an unprecedented surge in registrations across the country. For most observers, this is evidence of a renewed public interest in participating in our democracy. Others, unfortunately, see the prospect of higher voter turnout as a threat—and are working to keep voters from registering and voting.
The efforts to suppress voting range from challenging the eligibility of voters whose homes have been foreclosed to scaring college students out of registering where they go to school. And, as we've written previously, efforts are under way in a number of states to use trivial imperfections in paperwork to keep voters off the registration rolls or kick them off when they are successfully registered. One way citizens are blocked from casting ballots that count is through so-called "no match, no vote" policies.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Allegations of Voter Fraud, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Purges and Challenges, Voter Registration
By James Sample – 10/03/08
Former Montana State Representative Kevin Furey, a First Lieutenant in the Army Reserves, is presently in New Jersey preparing to return to Iraq. The reward for his service? Try disenfranchisement. At least that's what it could be if an error-laden effort by the Montana Republican Party to purge the voter rolls were to go forward.
As is too often the case with targeted, partisan efforts to challenge voters and get them purged from the rolls, an effort by the Montana Republican Party this week ostensibly aimed voter fraud appears to be, in the words of Matt Singer of the non-partisan Forward Montana, actually little more than an effort to "suppress the vote, targeting counties with large Indian, student, and low-income populations."
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Tags: Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Purges and Challenges, Voter Registration
By Wendy R. Weiser – 09/24/08
Updated (5:30pm): Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) writes to Social Security Administration seeking delay of shutdown. A copy of the letter is here. And a letter from EAC Commissioner Rosemary Rodriguez sent on the 19 can be found here.
A recent alert by the Social Security Administration announces that the agency plans to shut down its databases for maintenance from October 11 through October 13. While this might not sound like an election issue, it turns out that this could significantly impede registration of first-time voters as well as the re-registration of eligible citizens.
Here's why. A 2002 federal law, the Help America Vote Act, requires all states to "coordinate" their voter registration databases with the Social Security database (and state motor vehicle databases) for the purpose of processing new voter registration forms. For the millions of voters who do not have current driver's licenses and register using the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, state election officials are required to try to match their voter registration information against Social Security records. But if the Social Security database is down—as it will be for four days—they won't be able to do that. Across the country, the processing of these voter registration forms will grind to a halt for four days.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Registration, Voting Technology
By Adam Skaggs – 09/19/08
Cross-posted from the Huffington Post.
Concerns about matching voter data with motor vehicle records were back in the news last week in New Jersey, Wisconsin and Florida — but for very different reasons. In one case, the matches were conducted in an attempt to add voters to the registration rolls; in the others, to take them off. But the experience in each state teaches the same lesson: matching data between the voter and driver databases is an inherently flawed process — and one that's far too unreliable to make a successful "match" a precondition to registering and voting.
In New Jersey, it was an attempt by Secretary of State Nina Wells to expand the voting rolls that gave rise to the latest kerfuffle. Wells was concerned that some citizens who'd applied for driver's licenses hadn't been given the opportunity to register to vote, as is required under the "Motor Voter Act." So she had the Division of Elections cross-check the voter registration database against motor vehicle records. The data comparison turned up 880,000 driver's license records that couldn't be matched up with voter registration records. Officials concluded that this meant there were 880,000 drivers who weren't registered to vote. So, to be helpful, they began sending all those drivers a voter registration form, along with a letter encouraging them to fill it out and register so they could vote in November.
Unfortunately, a lot of those drivers already were registered, and they weren't too happy to receive letters implying they were not. The confusion arose because minor discrepancies between their records in the voter and motor vehicle databases — like missing middle initials or inconsistent treatment of hyphenated last names— prevented officials from matching a driver's record in the motor vehicle database with the same person's voter record.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Purges and Challenges, Voter Registration
By Adam Skaggs – 09/08/08
When Wisconsin
considered preventing voters from
casting regular ballots if the state didn't find a "complete match" of the
voter's data in the motor vehicle or Social Security database and the voter didn't
have acceptable proof of residence at the polls, we warned
them it was a bad idea. As we explained,
it's bad policy to make a complete "HAVA match" a precondition to voting a
regular ballot, because matching voter data fails from 20-30% of
the time.
We were right: the initial
results from Wisconsin
showed a match
failure rate of 22%. That is, nearly
1 in 4 voters weren't successfully "matched" with other government data—not
because they weren't eligible to vote, but because of typos, missed middle
initials, and other minor problems.
Thankfully, Wisconsin
heard the message and rejected
the proposed matching rule.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases
By Adam Skaggs – 08/28/08
*Update of posting regarding Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board.
The GAB met on August 27th and, by the slimmest possible
margin, rejected
the proposal to relegate all un-matched voters to casting provisional
ballots.
The close vote was likely influenced by data released by the
GAB indicating that, since Wisconsin
started conducting "HAVA matches," 22% of voters didn't
match. That means that if the GAB hadn't
voted against the misguided proposal, nearly a quarter of voters submitting new
registrations or address changes would have been denied a regular ballot in
November based on typos, data entry mistakes, missing middle initials and other
trivial clerical errors.
Although local advocates expect the issue to crop up again
in 2009, this victory means that Wisconsin
voters are at least safe for the November election.
Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases
By Adam Skaggs – 08/26/08
Having already rejected a proposed rule that would
needlessly disenfranchise eligible voters this November—joining forty-five
states and the District of Columbia in the process—Wisconsin unfortunately
appears to be reconsidering the policy.
Back in July, the state's Government Accountability Board ("GAB") considered
an emergency rule that would have prevented voters from casting regular ballots
if the state didn't find a "complete match" of the voter's information in the
motor vehicle or Social Security database and the voter did not show up at the
polls with acceptable proof of residence.
The GAB rightly rejected the proposal in July, after concluding it
had insufficient data about how well "matching" voter data worked, and how many
voters would be affected.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Registration
By Thaddeus Kromelis – 07/29/08
We don't need more reasons to worry about foreclosure rates.
Digby, nonetheless, citing this AP/CBSnews.com
story, provides one: the high rate of foreclosures in Ohio and the affect election officials
believe it could have on their voting rolls.
(Digby cited the voting issue in the context of a 7/26 longer posting on Hans von
Spakovsky, "legal disenfranchisement" and "voter fraud.") There's concern that a
wave of voters, still registered to their former—foreclosed—address, will
show up to the polls on election day. This could lead to a number of
pre-election challenges or a whole lot of voters casting provisional ballots in
Ohio.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Allegations of Voter Fraud, Election Day Issues, Voter Lists and Databases, Voter Purges and Challenges, Voter Registration
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