[EL] 15, 199 voters left off list due to late submission of forms

[Frank Askin]

It is the Election Day problems confronted by Rutgers students in New
Brunswick that led me to name the Rutgers University Student Assembly as
the primary plaintiff in our Election Day Registration suit, which
challenges NJ's 21-day advance registration requirement as an
unreasonable burden on the right to vote guaranteed under the State
Constitution. In 2008, thousands of Rutgers students went to vote to
discover that their registrations had not been processed and they were
not on the rolls.  FRANK




Prof. Frank Askin
Distinguished Professor of Law       and Director
Constitutional Litigation Clinic
Rutgers Law School/Newark
(973) 353-5687>>> Bev Harris <bev at blackboxvoting.org> 11/7/2011 3:24 PM
>>>
Hi Justin,

I enquired about this. Apparently it was mostly voter registration
groups
submitting forms late, based on what those involved with the elections
operation told me. Obviously we would expect voters to straggle in
late. All I
can base this on is anecdotal information from elections workers.

The registration date field at that time was the a date-stamp on the
card
applied by the county elections office. Now, that has been changed to
the date
entered. I think both dates need to be shown, and probably the date the
voter
put on the card as well.

The point of the article is that we need to be educating and motivating
voter
registration groups to do prompt submission. That is one area where
some
control over improvements can be applied, at least, through education
and
motivation.

It also looks blame can be pinned on the elections administrator, who,
according
to his own worksheets, could have at least gotten closer to the mark
than he
did. None of this was disclosed to the public, and apparently, not even
to the
elections commission. But I'll point out that this elections
administrator at
least tried to input the forms, unlike whoever apparently threw away 30
boxes
of voter reg. forms in Atlanta shortly before the 2008 election.

It is to the voter's credit that when they were unable to vote early,
they
returned to vote on Election Day but as I pointed out, almost none of
these
voters ever voted again.

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org 

* * * * *

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The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the
right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for
them to
know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control
over the
instruments of government we have created.

Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501c(3) elections watchdog
group
funded entirely by citizen donations.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html 
Black Box Voting
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Renton WA 98057


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