[EL] election day protection - query

[Greenberg, Kevin]

Prior to the statutory amendment, these questions were to go to Election Court.  In Philadelphia the President Judge did assignments to create the mini-courts (complete with all court staff).  Other counties staffed depending on their politics and geography -- mini-courts don't make sense in a counties with only 1 or 2 judges.  

I believe the telephonic confirmation was an administrative process to correct their own errors.  


Kevin Greenberg 
(215) 279-9912 



-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Askin [mailto:faskin at kinoy.rutgers.edu] 
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2013 4:07 PM
To: Greenberg, Kevin; 'Doug Hess'; 'law-election at uci.edu'
Subject: Re: [EL] election day protection - query

was this pursuant to statute or regulation? Was it all under 25 P.S.
3146.2a(a2)? FRANK




Prof. Frank Askin
Distinguished Professor of Law       and Director
Constitutional Litigation Clinic
Rutgers Law School/Newark
(973) 353-5687>>> "Greenberg, Kevin"
<Kevin.Greenberg at flastergreenberg.com> 2/22/2013 3:57 PM >>> Almost invariably it was some variation on a registration complaint involving the non-processing of registration or a relocation/cancellation.  A few of them were people who had moved and had not updated registrations.

With one exception, in the several elections I did this, every person who was willing to go to the polls, wait in line to be rejected, go to the regional "court", wait their turn, and testify under oath that they should have been registered, were given a court order and sent to the polls to vote.

The one exception who had been naturalized the week before and testified truthfully.  The registration having not been submitted timely, the voter was told to vote in the next election and the lawyers working the polls helped him register at the time.

No idea how many people did not come to court.  Was told it was a significant impediment.

>From the 2006 General through the 2012 Primary, we also had a process
where pollbook questions could be called in by the pollworker for verbal confirmation by election staff (why isn't person X in the pollbook?  Oh, she should be, ok).  In order to curb "rampant" impersonation fraud, on the motion of the Republican Commissioner in September this process was eliminated for the November election over the objection of the esteemed, wise and (my wife would hopefully say) handsome counsel for the
Pennsylvania Democratic Party and OFA.   Ironically, it would have been
a very useful safeguard and would have been important for the first time since cell phones were distributed to the poll workers in 2006.
Kevin Greenberg
(215) 279-9912


From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Doug Hess
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2013 3:36 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] election day protection - query

Do you recall what problems the 20-30 people (those you would see in the mini-courts pre-HAVA) would have? I.e., what was the range of reasons (and which most frequent) that they were told to go to the mini-court? For instance, "I was on the rolls here before and now I'm not" or "I sent in a registration application and now I'm not on the
rolls", etc.   Any recollection on the frequency of the outcome of the
complaints?

(As an aside, that 20-30 people had the problem raises the question:
how many more were also turned away at the precinct but decided not to bother with going to the mini-court? Probably not easy to know. Would be nice to have precincts log each such event, regardless of what the voter goes on to do.)

Doug

============

From:
law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>
 On Behalf Of
Greenberg, Kevin
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 4:09 PM
To: 'Frank Askin'; 'Rick Hasen';
'law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>'
Subject: Re: [EL] election day protection - query

Frank,

Pennsylvania had this more generally before it was terminated by a change in state law when we went to provisional ballots post-HAVA.

In Philadelphia, we had about a dozen mini-courts in police stations around the city.  In a few elections I did a half-day shift and would see
20-30
people come through.  Extrapolate out, we are probably talking about
500
voters in a day.

Pennsylvania still allows for emergency absentees that require judicial relief for people who become unable to vote in person (typically
hospitalization) after 5 pm on the Friday before the election.  We typically see 3-4 of these a year, in a county of 1.4 million people.

They now co-locate this process with Election Court, which sits to handle all election-related issues in the county.

Kevin Greenberg
Flaster/Greenberg PC