Election officials telling college students they can't vote

saltwn · #1 (**permalink**) 10-25-2008, 03:23 AM

Quote:

Colorado Democrats accused a Republican county clerk Wednesday of falsely informing Colorado College that students from outside the state could not register to vote if their parents claimed them as a dependent on their tax returns.

Balink's actions are the latest of several instances in which local election officials, including some in Virginia and South Carolina, have discouraged college students from voting in a year in which legions of students have thrown their energy behind Obama.

Martha Tierney, an attorney for the Colorado Democratic Party, said she obtained emails showing that Balink's office sent a misleading flier to the Colorado College president's office to provide students with voter-registration information and urged its circulation on campus.

The flier stated: "What this means is that if your parents still claim you on their income tax returns, and they file that return in a state other than Colorado, you are not eligible to register to vote or vote in Colorado."

Voter residency requirements vary from state to state, but must meet the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, said Jon Greenbaum, a voting rights expert with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Greenbaum said that what states and counties can’t do is adopt rules that treat one group of voters differently than others.

Greenbaum noted that Virginia’s elections board recently revised language on its Internet site that discouraged students from registering after reports of a similar episode at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Va. The New York Times reported Sept. 8 that a local registrar had issued two releases that incorrectly suggested dire consequences for the university’s students who registered to vote there, including the possibility they no longer could be claimed as dependents on their parents' tax returns.

Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director of the Student Public Interest Research Group’s New Voters Project in Washington, said she encountered similar problems when she posed as a college freshman last week and called registrar’s offices in Greenville County, S.C., home to Furman University, and York County, S.C., where Winthrop University is located.

Jahagirdar said a Greenville official asked if her parents listed her as a dependent, and when she replied in the affirmative, told her: “You should vote where your parents live.” She said a York County representative asked if she was in town for school, and when she said yes, stated flatly: “You can’t vote here.”www.kansascity.com | 10/23/2008 | Election officials telling college students they can't vote

That's kind of mean. Telling students they can't vote just because you think they might vote for a guy you don't like.

Spencer Collins · #2 (**permalink**) 10-25-2008, 04:17 AM

McCainians are getting pretty desperate,expect more of this behavior..

cnredd · #3 (**permalink**) 10-25-2008, 09:06 AM

ACORN immediately requested his resume...

DownSouth · #4 (**permalink**) 10-25-2008, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by saltwn

That's kind of mean. Telling students they can't vote just because you think they might vote for a guy you don't like.

Not just mean - it threatens the outcome of the election. More Democrat votes are at stake because of the intense interest, and some believe it is a GOP strategy. Not hard to understand why after the Rove/Bush politicizing the DOJ and gutting the DOJ Civil Rights unit.

Block the Vote : Rolling Stone
Block the Vote

Quote:

In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

In the century following the Civil War, millions of black Americans in the Deep South lost their constitutional right to vote, thanks to literacy tests, poll taxes and other Jim Crow restrictions imposed by white officials. Add up all the modern-day barriers to voting erected since the 2004 election — the new registrations thrown out, the existing registrations scrubbed, the spoiled ballots, the provisional ballots that were never counted — and what you have is millions of voters, more than enough to swing the presidential election, quietly being detached from the electorate by subterfuge.

"Jim Crow was laid to rest, but his cousins were not," says Donna Brazile. "We got rid of poll taxes and literacy tests but now have a second generation of schemes to deny our citizens their franchise." Come November, the most crucial demographic may prove to be Americans who have been denied the right to vote. If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat John McCain at the polls — they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering.

The NY Times confirms both registered and newly registered voters are at risk, but says it doesn't "appear" to be a coordinated effort by either party.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us...pagewanted=all
States’ Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal

Quote:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.

Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately.

The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters.

In addition to the six swing states, three more states appear to be violating federal law. Alabama and Georgia seem to be improperly using Social Security information to screen registration applications from new voters. And Louisiana appears to have removed thousands of voters after the federal deadline for taking such action.

Both articles are worthy of a full read. Looks like poll results and election results could be far, far, far apart.

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