[EL] Moter-Voter problem.

[Brenda Wright]

Looks like the BMV employee did give bad information to your roommate.  The non-partisan Election Protection site explains<http://www.866ourvote.org/state/in> that in Indiana, voting rights are restored upon release from incarceration.  The worker there evidently did not understand the law - unfortunately, that's all too common.  In terms of court action, the NVRA requires a pre-litigation notice letter anyway, so you would start with a letter to the SOS (probably copying the local BMV office), and hopefully that would resolve it, but if not you can go from there.  Feel free to follow up with me off-line.

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Robbin Stewart
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2012 6:39 PM
To: Election Law
Subject: [EL] Moter-Voter problem.

Today I took one of my roommates to the BMV in Indiana to register to vote and get his ID. (It was his third trip there to try to get his ID; they did not accept his paperwork the first two times. This is normal.) His version of what happened when he tried to register to vote is that he was asked if he'd ever been convicted of as felony. He had, 16 years ago, and was told he could not register to vote. As far as I know, this is not true. In Indiana, once a felon is out of jail, off probation or parole, they can vote. I then took him to city hall and got him registered to vote. My question is, is this a Motor-Voter law violation? Is it actionable, are there attorney's fees provisions in the statute? Can anyone make a referral to a lawyer who works on such cases?
I am planning to return to the BMV branch later in the week to try to verify the details of what their policy is.


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