The perma-stickied Voting Problems thread

[FORD]

**MODERATOR'S NOTE: As Election Day closes in, I expect details of more known problems and potential problems with voting systems will be surface. Voting is a constitutional RIGHT, not a partisan issue, so I don't expect anyone should have a problem with this thread. Feel free to post issues here if they relate to actual problems with ballots, polling places etc., but please leave the "Michael Moore buys underwear" type of articles out of this. This is the most crucial election in American history, and it is your DUTY as an American to see that every American's right to vote is freely exercized and every vote counted**

[FORD]

Last update: September 30, 2004 at 11:48 PM
Some bumps for Minnesota voter registration
Mark Brunswick, Star Tribune
October 1, 2004 REGISTER1001


Minnesota's new voter registration system is getting a failing grade for its performance from many of the state's county election officials less than five weeks before the Nov. 2 election.

The system logs people off, wipes out previously entered data and is so slow that counties already are straining their overtime budgets just to get information entered, the officials complained. And that could lead to some voters being turned away from the polls on Election Day, they said.

"Things that used to take minutes are taking hours. Things that took hours are taking days," Carlton County Auditor-Treasurer Paul Gassert told the Senate Elections Committee on Thursday.

Minnesota is one of only nine states nationwide to implement the new system for this election under a federal law designed to prevent problems that plagued the 2000 presidential election.

Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, whose office is coordinating implementation of the system, defended it at the Senate hearing, saying many counties report success with it. She also suggested that some counties may be at least partly responsible for their own problems because of technical shortcomings of their computer firewalls and capacity. Some counties, for instance, may temporarily lose their connection to the secretary of state's system if a video conference is eating up bandwidth at the same time.

"To come to this committee and say that the system is slow and that it's automatically the state's fault is not necessarily true," Kiffmeyer testified.

Both state and county officials said they doubted that the controversy over the Minnesota Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS) would directly affect vote tabulation on Nov. 2. Some, however, voiced concern that it could affect who comes to the polls and who might be permitted to vote.

In a request for comments conducted by the Minnesota Association of County Officers, 27 counties reported problems with the system, including slow performance and difficulty in using precinct finder functions. The centerpiece of SVRS is a $4 million computer system that connects all local voter rolls with state and federal databases and eases modification of inaccurate or outdated records. New voters and those with changed addresses must provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number to verify their identity.

Many local officials praise the potential of the system, which they say may eventually be more efficient and user-friendly than the one it is replacing. But they say myriad bugs still need to be worked out.

"This is going to be a good system. But not this year," said Dorothy McClung, Ramsey County's chief election official. "Let's wait until it works."

Late arrival

Some states appear to be making a smooth transition to the new system, notably South Carolina and Kentucky, which, like Minnesota, already had statewide registration databases. Other states, such as West Virginia, have reported more difficulty, according to Dan Seligson, editor of electionline.org, a nonpartisan election monitoring group.

Elsewhere, college students, American Indians and others are complaining that new federal identification requirements will hamper efforts to get new voters to the polls.

The registration system was not the only contentious issue during the 50-minute Senate hearing. Kiffmeyer, who incurred the wrath of some senators when she arrived 25 minutes late because of a radio interview, was also grilled about complaints that her office had run out of voter registration cards last week.

Kiffmeyer's office had 1.25 million registration cards printed this year, but aggressive voter registration drives have consumed much of the supply. On Sept. 23, for instance, Kiffmeyer's office had 29,000 cards and gave out 22,000. She said another shipment of 22,500 cards has since come in and 250,000 more are expected by next week, making a total of about 2.5 million cards in circulation this year.

"It was just a couple days there where we took a little dip in the supply," Kiffmeyer said.

She said 2.8 million Minnesotans already are registered out of an eligible voting population of about 3.4 million, an enrollment of more than 80 percent that is second only to Maine's.

"Some of the problems I'm hearing about are wonderful, like running out of voter registration cards," said Sen. Dave Kleis, R-St. Cloud. "This is not going to be the catastrophe that some folks are portraying."

Staff librarian Sandy Date contributed to this report

Mark Brunswick is at

mbrunswick@startribune.com.

[Sgt Schultz]

Re: The perma-stickied Voting Problems thread

Originally posted by FORD
**MODERATOR'S NOTE: As Election Day closes in, I expect details of more known problems and potential problems with voting systems will be surface. Voting is a constitutional RIGHT, not a partisan issue, so I don't expect anyone should have a problem with this thread. Feel free to post issues here if they relate to actual problems with ballots, polling places etc., but please leave the "Michael Moore buys underwear" type of articles out of this. This is the most crucial election in American history, and it is your DUTY as an American to see that every American's right to vote is freely exercized and every vote counted**

News flash News Flash - Counting EVERY vote in our elections has NEVER happened try as we may. For Kerry to even say that he will make sure it happens is complete nonsense.

[FORD]

FDLE Investigating Suspicious Florida County Voter Applications

POSTED: 11:08 pm EDT October 5, 2004
UPDATED: 11:09 pm EDT October 5, 2004

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating 1,500 voter registration forms received by the Leon County elections office that apparently were altered to register local students as Republicans.

County elections supervisor Ion Sancho said it was suspicious enough that the registration forms were all photocopies, but the new voters were also between the ages of 18-24, a group that often registers with no party affiliation.

"When we saw that all of these individuals were registered as Republicans, a buzzer went off," Sancho said.

Most were students at Florida A&M University, Florida State University or Tallahassee Community College. The office began calling the applicants, contacting a couple of dozen before deciding to turn the voter forms over to the FDLE.

"Once it became clear that their information did not jibe with the information on the application forms, that's when we decided to act," Sancho said. "The overwhelming majority of them had not selected the Republican Party as the party they wanted to be registered in."

The Leon County case is one of several being looked at around the state. In some cases, there are reports of bogus addresses, forms coming in with false information and registered voters who are being reregistered without their knowledge.

In St. Petersburg, former Mayor Charles Schuh received a letter saying he was ineligible to vote in the Aug. 31 primary because his registration application wasn't received on time. He later learned that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now had turned in a registration form with his correct name, address and phone number, but the wrong date of birth, final four digests of his Social Security number and gender.

"If I could find the guy I would make sure he was prosecuted for fraud and forgery. They could have stopped me from voting in the primary," Schuh, an attorney, said Tuesday. "That's wrong, dead wrong."

He was allowed to vote after showing elections officials his voter registration card and telling them the incorrect registration application wasn't submitted by him. Schuh said the registration form with his name was turned over to the state attorney's office along with 14 others that appear fraudulent.

State Attorney Bernie McCabe said all appeared to be turned in by ACORN.

"It does not appear right now that it can result in any impact on the election because the phony people aren't going to be voting, but it certainly creates a lot of work for everybody," McCabe said. "The supervisors of elections have enough on their plates than worrying about people turning in phony cards."

While he said ACORN is willing to help investigators, he said the problem appears to be caused by paid workers falsifying forms in order to make quotas.

"When you put quotas on people, you're asking for trouble," McCabe said.

Brian Kettenring, the head organizer for Florida ACORN, said, "We take these 1,500 cards as seriously as the 212,298 that we collected this past year. And for that reason we are working with the state attorney to insure the integrity of every registration.

"The law is the law and everybody needs to know they need to follow the law."

In Leon County, the alleged fraud could have meant the 1,500 applicants wouldn't be allowed to vote. Sancho, however, said he is placing the people on the voting rolls with no party affiliation.

"They will be eligible to vote in November," Sancho said. "We are not going to allow lawbreakers to profit by their actions."

Both major political parties criticized the alleged fraud.

"It's absolutely despicable, but not surprising," said Florida Democratic Party Chairman Scott Maddox. "After the year 2000, we should do whatever we can to make sure we have a fair electoral process. Obviously we still have attempts to try to defraud the system."

In 2000, George W. Bush defeated Vice President Al Gore by 537 votes in a hotly disputed election. During the five-week recount that kept the world waiting to see who would be president, there were allegations that people were wrongly taken off voter rolls or turned away at the polls.

Republican Party spokeswoman Mindy Tucker Fletcher placed the blame for some of this year's registration problems on the many independent groups signing up new voters.

"It's unfortunate when you have all these groups from outside the state coming in here and trying to take over the elections process and they are motivated not by what's best for Florida, but by making money for themselves," she said.

Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.link

[ELVIS]

This thread is nothing more than FORD conconcting elaborate mystical conspiracies in preparation to lose the election...

Guess what FORD, we don't care what you think, or believe as far as this election goes...

Your input has been reduced, by your own doing, to mere comic relief...

[Jesus Christ]

Gregory....

[Big Train]

But somehow THIS is worth making a sticky out of...

[FORD]

Originally posted by Big Train
But somehow THIS is worth making a sticky out of...

Yes it is. It concerns a serious threat to a contitutional right.

That is a non partisan issue and one of critical importance within the next few weeks.

[LoungeMachine]

We all know how this administration planned for the Iraq invasion BEFORE they were even in office.

We all watched them steal the election

We all have watched them circumvent the Constitution, slander their critics, and deny any mistakes were made

Why on earth with everything on the line, should any of us think for one moment they won't try ANYTHING to win this very tight race.

By the way.....Hey warham, BigBloatedBrian, and Elvis, just WHY is it your "war president" is locked in such a tight battle to keep his job weeks before the election if he's doing such a great job?

This administration is a fraud, full of incompetent thugs, liars, and thieves. And the people they choose to advise them are no better


Perle
Chalabi
Abu Grahib
KKKarl Rove

LIES
SLANDER
BLACKMAIL


Good riddance

[ELVIS]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
By the way.....Hey warham, BigBloatedBrian, and Elvis, just WHY is it your "war president" is locked in such a tight battle to keep his job weeks before the election if he's doing such a great job?

Because the liberal freaks like yourself have always had the bigger mouth in terms of the liberal media, protest marches, gay right support, abortion support, anti-war support, anti big business rallies, ect...

You name it, you liberals open your big fat mouths to complain about it...

[FORD]

Please dudes, I'm serious about this.... Keep the partisan stuff in the other threads.

[ELVIS]

hahaha...

[Warham]

As FORD insisted, I'll keep my correct partisan comments out of this thread.

[Sgt Schultz]

Democrat Criminal Operatives Leave Bush and Cheney Off Ballot!! Bastards!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
Bush, Cheney Left Off Mo. County Ballots

Thu Oct 7,10:01 PM ET

VAN BUREN, Mo. - Officials in one Missouri county are reprinting absentee ballots for the Nov. 2 general election after discovering that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were left off.

The ballots were mailed beginning Sept. 21, and Carter County Clerk Becky Gibbs said several voters noticed the oversight.

"We are rectifying it," she said. "There was no intent to leave them off."

Fewer than 500 of the erroneous ballots were sent out, and some have already been returned.

Replacement ballots will be sent to everyone who requested an absentee ballot along with a letter explaining the error.

Terri Durdaller, spokeswoman for the Secretary of State, said that if absentee voters who previously returned a ballot send a new one, it will replace the previous one. If they don't return a new ballot, their first one will be counted.

"The key is just to make sure everybody does get the changed ballot," Durdaller said.

Ballots that other voters will use Nov. 2 have not been printed yet.

Gibbs said the cost to print replacement absentee ballots should be minimal.

[FORD]

If I recall, there were issues in several states of Junior & Dick being legally ineligible for the ballot because they delayed their official nominations until September. Was MO one of those states?