[EL] Evaporating voter histories confirmed, NEW: 35% purge rate

[Bev Harris]

A few weeks ago, I reported that 488 Black, Democratic voters histories had
disappeared from Shelby County TN records:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82058.html

That was widely reported on regional TV, and has resulted in US Rep. Steve Cohen
requesting a formal investigation by the US DoJ. My investigative work has now
been corroborated, and the problem has expanded to 11,000 missing voter
histories, in a study by the Tennessee Democratic Party and the Democratic
National Committee's voter protection team.

So I began looking into what happens when someone is incorrectly switched to
"inactive" status:
full story: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82106.html

I identifed 1,638 such persons, and found that 35% of them were subsequently
purged. The remaining voters were put through extra steps to reinstate
themselves or reregister.

More disturbing even than the incorrect switches to "inactive" and the
evaporating voter histories is this: I have been notified by a credible source
within the US Post Office that the required final step for purging, the
nonforwardable notice, is being sent with truncated addresses to voters in
certain zip codes. I have passed this along to a leader in Tennessee's civil
rights community, and have traced the firm doing the mailings to Business Ink
Corporation, a Texas-based corporation with an office in Memphis that
reportedly does mailings for 500 counties.

The 1,638 voters incorrectly transferred to "inactive" status were not
proportionately distributed; there was a 14% skew towards Black voters.

I think this story is going to continue to develop. Note that the 11,000 voter
histories now found missing represent 29 Tennessee counties, with 3,000 of them
concentrated in Davidson County.

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

* * * * *

Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. 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
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98057


----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.