Thousands Face Mix-Ups In Voter Registrations [or what happens when lawmakers and officials do not understand their data and data matching technology!]

Description

Thousands of voters across the country must reestablish their eligibility in the next three weeks in order for their votes to count on Nov. 4, a result of new state registration systems that are incorrectly rejecting them.

In Alabama, scores of voters are being labeled as convicted felons on the basis of incorrect lists.

Michigan must restore thousands of names it illegally removed from voter rolls over residency questions, a judge ruled this week.

Tens of thousands of voters could be affected in Wisconsin. Officials there admit that their database is wrong one out of five times when it flags voters, sometimes for data discrepancies as small as a middle initial or a typo in a birth date. When the six members of the state elections board -- all retired judges -- ran their registrations through the system, four were incorrectly rejected because of mismatches.

As the gateway to voting, the new registration lists have become the focus of attention from many fronts, including voting rights advocates, officials concerned about fraud and political campaigns looking for an advantage.

The changes stem from the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in 2002 in the aftermath of the deadlocked presidential race two years earlier. The law provided millions of dollars for states to upgrade voting equipment and procedures, and to create the centralized databases, which allow voters in most states to check their registrations and polling places on the Internet.

As the databases are implemented, voters' names and other information are verified against state driver's license records or Social Security records to determine their eligibility. Federal law allows each state to decide what constitutes a match -- whether it will accept nicknames, for example.

But states are not using "the best scientific knowledge known today" when they verify the information, said Herbert Lin, who is studying the issue for the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees election reforms.

By federal law, anyone whose name is flagged must be notified and given a chance to prove his or her eligibility. But voting rights experts say voters are not always alerted, and even if they are, some may decide to simply skip the election. If questions about eligibility remain on Election Day, those voters are entitled to cast a "provisional" ballot. But which of those ballots are ultimately counted depends on local and state rules.

Several of the battles over registration lists have taken on a partisan tinge, including in Montana, where a state GOP official challenged nearly 6,000 voters over apparent discrepancies in their addresses. He dropped his challenge after Democrats went to court, but not before one county sent letters to hundreds of voters informing them that their registrations were in jeopardy. Now the county is trying to let them know they are eligible to cast ballots after all.
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The Republicans filed the case "with the express intent to disenfranchise voters," a federal judge said.

Among the errors with Wisconsin's database, which has been fully in place just since August, are incorrect ages for 95,000 voters, all of whom are listed as 108 years old. If no birth date was available when names were moved into the electronic system, it automatically assigned Jan. 1, 1900.

In court filings, Van Hollen said "tens of thousands" of ineligible voters could cast ballots, noting that Wisconsin "will be a swing state" whose 10 electoral votes "may be won by a very narrow margin."

The crush of new registrants around the country has heightened the problems, including in Colorado, where 22,000 must clear up questions about their addresses and other discrepancies before they can cast a regular ballot.

In Alabama, the centralized system triggered a new controversy over a constitutional ban on voting by people convicted of a felony crime of "moral turpitude." The governor's office in the past year issued a list of 480 crimes that meet the definition, including disrupting a funeral and conspiring to set an illegal brush fire.

Alabama's court administrator and attorney general issued a shorter list of 70 more violent and serious crimes. But Secretary of State Beth Chapman said the longer list was used to identify ineligible voters until three weeks ago.

Among those wrongly flagged by the database was former Republican governor Guy Hunt, who was driven out of office in 1993 after being convicted of a felony ethics violation for misusing inaugural funds. But Hunt, 75, received a pardon that declared him innocent a decade ago.

Original URL

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101703360.html?sid=ST2008101702930&s_pos=

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101703360.html?sid=ST2008101702930&s_pos=