McClatchy: As balloting nears, election officials are confused about who can vote

[babylonsister]

:grr:

As balloting nears, election officials are confused about who can vote


Voting rights for citizens with criminal records

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — States have barred 5.3 million Americans from voting because they have criminal records, but many of them have been wrongfully disenfranchised by county election officials who are confused or ill-informed about varying state laws on felons' voting rights, two civil-rights groups reported Wednesday.

Half of the election officials interviewed in Colorado and more than a third of those contacted in New York didn't know that people on probation could vote, said a report by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union. The report was based on interviews with hundreds of local election officials from 2003 to 2008.

It said that half of those interviewed in Arizona didn't know that state law provided a process for restoring the voting rights of people with more than one conviction. A third of the election officials interviewed in Ohio did know that individuals who committed misdemeanors could vote, and a third of those surveyed in New York, New Jersey and Washington state said they'd require special documentation from felons, even though it was not required by law, the report said.

"Unless citizens receive accurate information about their voting rights from those sources where they should be able to get it, large swaths of eligible voters stand to be denied their rightful access to the voting booth,'' said Laleh Ispahani, senior policy counsel in the ACLU's Racial Justice Program.

In a separate report, the Brennan Center said that the names of other eligible voters also are being improperly purged from state voter registration lists, often through computer matches from master lists that are "riddled with errors."

This second report cited the experience of Hilde Stafford, 85, a Wappingers Falls, N.Y., resident whose name was among 23,366 discovered by the Social Security Administration to have been wrongly added to its Death Master File between January 2004 and September 2005.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53345.html

[crazylikafox]

1. CONFUSED?????

I don't think confused is the right word

[babylonsister]

2. Agreed; they're making me disgusted. They had 4 years to figure it out? nt

[rucky]

3. How far ahead are we in Virginia?

Watch a bulk of the vote challenges come from there.

[babylonsister]

4. +9 in VA...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=7270703&mesg_id=7270703