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Other Voter List Issues
By Maggie Barron – 10/16/08
Joe the Plumber appeared in last night's debate as a symbol of Ohio's "everyman." He is also now a symbol of the "everyman" whose name is misspelled in government databases. Or, for voter-fraud enthusiasts, an example of yet another type of voter who should be challenged or removed from the rolls.
After his debut on the national stage as a skeptical swing voter, reporters checking up on Joe could not find his voter registration record. That's because his last name, Wurzelbacher, is misspelled in state databases.
According to the latest ruling from Ohio, the 200,000 newly registered voters whose names do not match government databases will have their names turned over to local election officials, where they will be at risk of being illegally removed from registration lists, or challenged at the polls on Election Day.
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Tags: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Other Voter List Issues, Purges, Voter Registration Drives
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, No Match, No Vote, Other Voter List Issues, Purges, Voter Registration Drives
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: Democracy, Voting Rights & Elections, Challenges, Caging & Vote Suppression, Other Voter List Issues, Purges, Voter Registration Drives
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, Other Voter List Issues, Voter Registration Drives, 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, No Match, No Vote, Other Voter List Issues, Purges, Voter Registration Drives
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, No Match, No Vote, Other Voter List Issues
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, Other Voter List Issues
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, No Match, No Vote, Other Voter List Issues, Voter Registration Drives
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