Thursday, September 11, 2008

Correcting Wisconsin’s Voter Registry

Someone please explain to me why this is a bad thing?

Kevin St. John, a special assistant to Van Hollen, said the attorney general is simply asking that truly ineligible voters - such as felons serving their sentences or dead people on voter rolls - be rendered ineligible to vote. He said Van Hollen is not asking the state to take away the voting rights of people who have missing initials or other minor errors because that’s a matter for the board to decide.

Don’t we want to purge the dead people and felons off of our voter rolls?

(8) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1708 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin

  1. Not to mention the Acorn voter signups.  One in 5 registrations are bogus, and the Dem’s don’t want anything done about this for one reason.  Steal Elections.

    http://www.google.com/search?rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-17,GGLD:en&hl;=en&q;=acorn+bogus+registrations&aq;=f&oq;=acorn+bogus+registration

    Take your pick from the 30,100 articles listed on Google.

    What would be the reason not to make sure every vote is legal?

    The argument that it would disenfranchise voters, is not correct, because if there is a problem at the poll, they can register right there. 

    What would be the reason not to make sure every vote is legal?

    Only one answer, to steal the election with bogus votes.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 11, 2008 at 1751 hrs


  2. That would be fine, as long as you can be sure that you purge only those ineligible. Unfortunately, perfectly legal voters can be purged, and only find out about it on Election Day without a chance to remedy the situation.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 11, 2008 at 1816 hrs


  3. I’m all for purging erroneous or otherwise bogus names from the registration list.

    Posted by scott on September 11, 2008 at 1819 hrs


  4. This is easy Steve-O.  We purge the names.  If someone shows up on election da and they have been purged, then they register to vote then since we allow same day registration.  If someone doesn’t have proper ID to get same day registered, you take a provisional ballot that is then verified within 24- 48 hours.

    What I’d like Owen to do here is bring together a staff of volunteers to help these over-worked city clerks manually check the names since apparently some city clerks feel there is “not enough time” to handle this.  I’d volunteer my weekends between now and November to help sort through and double check names and addresses. 

    Surely no one would object to this….would they?  It is federal law that this be done.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 11, 2008 at 1822 hrs


  5. Hey, I’m just loving the irony of getting lectured on how to run clean elections by Scot Ross and Mark Pocan.

    Posted by Kevin Binversie on September 11, 2008 at 1822 hrs


  6. Steve:

    I had the same reaction when I heard the story.  I do this kind of database cleanup all the time. So I called around and found out that the problem is due to the software they use to check matches.  It requires you to submit each name individually and takes a couple days to return a result, which the clerk has to manually look up and print and then determine how to resolve.  The particular field that caused the mismatch is not explained in the returned data.  It’s just rejected.  So no one knows why it wasn’t a match.  In one recent case a clerk told me a missing hyphen in a last name caused it.  So that took her about 5 days to resolve with the voter who’d registered online.

    I think they ALL want to comply and certainly everyone involved wants complete and accurate data.  But given the administrative workload prior to November they do not see how it is possible to get all this checking accomplished without creating a chaotic mess.  The timing was just bad.  The software for checking against DOT was only implemented last month across the state at over 1800 municipalities—so I’d cut them some slack.

    I doubt they’d take volunteers but if they do, I’ll sign up.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 11, 2008 at 1840 hrs


  7. Don’t we want to purge the dead people and felons off of our voter rolls?

    Depends on which party you identify with…

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on September 11, 2008 at 1848 hrs


  8. Even the dead Republicans vote Democrat. 100 percent of the cemetery precincts vote Democrat. Figure that one out.

    Posted by Peter on September 12, 2008 at 0728 hrs


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