WATCHING THE COUNT

From the Brennan Center. In most of the these cases, the actions are designed to reduce the Democratic vote.

Colorado is treating applications missing unnecessary checkmarks to indicate that the registrant lacks a driver's license as incomplete. Thousands of recent registrations are already affected, and there will likely be more as counties process new forms.

Florida still rejects voter registration forms submitted without checkmarks in check boxes that are duplicative of other information on the forms. Thousands of votes were lost in prior federal elections because of this practice.
In September 2008, the Ohio Secretary of State announced the election officials must reject absentee ballot requests made by voters whose eligibility was not in serious doubt because of their failure to check an unnecessary check box. A federal court ordered the Secretary of State to process those ballot requests.

On October 20, 2008, the Nevada Republican Party wrote to the Secretary of State asking him to stop county officials from allowing voters who registered before the voter registration deadline but whose applications were incomplete to vote after correcting their applications. Nevada law allows voters to correct their applications within fifteen days after receiving notice from the state. On October 22, the Nevada Secretary of State rejected this request and ruled that applications corrected after the voter registration deadline but within 15 days after the county clerk sends notice are timely.

Across the country, there have been reports of widespread misinformation about student voting rights, misleading and intimidating statements, and registration and residency barriers unique to students. The fact that students are readily identifiable at their college community polling stations also makes them easy targets for partisan challengers or voter intimidation efforts. The result is a disproportionate number of student voters being challenged at the polls, discouraged from voting, or prematurely told to cast a provisional ballot.

Local registrars in several states, including in Virginia, were denying registration to students who provided dorm room addresses even though those are valid registration addresses.

A registrar in Montgomery County, Virginia, affecting Virginia Tech University, issued a memo giving incorrect and intimidating information to students about the consequences of registering to vote, including possible loss of financial aid and tax dependence status. Similarly, a county clerk in Colorado Springs, Colorado incorrectly told students at Colorado College that they could not vote at school if their parents claimed them as dependents on their federal tax returns. The websites of the Virginia and Indiana Secretary of States still contain misleading information that could dissuade eligible student voters.

On October 10, the registrar of Waller County, Texas entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to stop imposing unfair and illegal barriers to student voting.

Several states make it very difficult for students to establish residency for voting purposes. In Idaho and Tennessee, for example, students cannot establish voting residency unless they have affirmative plans to remain in the state after graduation. Virginia and Indiana also make it difficult for students to establish residency.

Michigan and Tennessee require all first-time voters who registered by mail to vote in person; they cannot vote absentee. This makes it nearly impossible for college students (a great percentage of whom are young, first-time voters) to vote in their hometowns

A flier recently disseminated on the campus of Drexel University in Philadelphia warned that undercover officers would be present at the polls, looking for voters with outstanding warrants or parking violations.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs denied voter registration access to residents and patients of its facilities, refusing to allow election officials or nonpartisan groups to offer voter registration services, and failing to provide such services itself. A last-minute change in policy offered only a partial fix to this problem.

Several states, including New Mexico and Florida, have enacted restrictive laws that interfere with the ability of groups to do voter registration drives.

A number of states have not been providing voter registration services at social service agencies, as required by the federal Motor Voter law.

In recent elections, robo-phone calls and misleading flyers, often targeting minority and low-income communities, have spread false information regarding elections and voting qualifications.

Two families reported visits by a private investigator inquiring about relatives that the state Republican Party alleges voted fraudulently in the June primary. The private investigator requested identification for relatives in question as proof of their eligibility, potentially in violation of federal law.

Deceptive fliers about the consequences of voting were distributed in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Philadelphia.

A law enforcement officer in Greene County, Ohio sought the names of 300 voters who registered and voted at the beginning of Ohio's early voting period in a town made up largely of students. The effort, which was later withdrawn, was criticized as an effort to intimidate student voters and deter others from voting.

In a move that could intimidate and deter voters, Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters recently requested, via subpoena, personal information for 40% of the voters who registered and immediately cast a ballot during the weeklong period in which Ohio allows same-day registration and voting.

Dozens of voters reported that a firm hired by the California Republican Party tricked them into registering with the GOP when signing a petition they believed to toughen penalties against child molesters.

Residents have complained of misleading calls that provide inaccurate information regarding absentee ballot deadlines. The State Board of Elections is investigating.

Mississippi election officials were sharply criticized, in a New York Times editorial and in a letter sent by the Brennan Center, for their decision to place the Wicker-Musgrove U.S. Senate race at the bottom of Mississippi's ballot. This "ballot trick" placed the Senate race far below the other federal races listed in the 2008 election, creating a confusing layout for the ballot, one that could potentially mislead and disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Mississippi voters in that race, particularly low-income and minority voters.

Twelve Ohio counties released sample paper ballots that split the presidential contest over two columns for this November's election. As the Brennan Center's study found, this particular layout often confuses voters and causes them to double-vote, an action which ultimately results in an uncounted ballot.

As a result of a ballot design problem in North Carolina, votes for president may have already been lost in the early voting period. The ballot is designed, counterintuitively, so that a straight-party vote does not include a vote for president; voters must separately mark their presidential contest choice.

The Republican Party of Montana challenged the registrations of over 6,000 voters in 7 counties based on change of address information. Many were service members and students eligible to vote in Montana but who had their mail forwarded to where they were serving or going to school. Under Montana's challenge rules, these voters would have had to answer the challenges to the satisfaction of election officials before being allowed to vote. After a public outcry-including criticism by the Republican Lieutenant Governor-the party abandoned the challenges.

The Chairman of the Republican Party of Macomb County, Michigan reportedly told an online publication that the party planned to mount challenges to voters whose names appeared on foreclosure lists. After public criticism and instructions by the Michigan Director of Elections that these challenges are insufficient under Michigan law, the Chairman denied that there were such plans (and even sued the publication for libel). There have been fears and reports that similar challenges will be mounted in other states, particularly battleground states such as Ohio where more than 5% of homes are currently in the foreclosure process.

Michigan illegally purged its voter rolls this year within 90 days of an election and using non-forwardable mailings to recently registered voters, according to a recent federal court ruling. The court ordered the restoration of about 1,400 voters who had been removed because their voter identification cards were returned as undelivered.

In response to a New York Times article, the Colorado Secretary of State admitted that at least 2,454 voters were purged illegally within 90 days of a federal election

Georgia recently began using an unreliable matching process to purge the voter rolls of alleged non-citizens. The process they use misses naturalized citizens because it only checks the citizenship documents used to obtain driver's licenses, no matter how long ago, and those records are not updated when legal residents become naturalized

Earlier this year, a county election administrator in Muscogee County, Georgia purged 700 people who were supposedly ineligible because of criminal convictions. The purge was highly inaccurate and included people who never received even a parking ticket.

About a week before the Mississippi primary, an election administrator in Madison County, Mississippi improperly purged approximately 10,000 voters, reportedly from her home computer. Reportedly, the purge was detected when it was discovered that a local candidate was removed from the voter rolls. By all accounts, the Secretary of State's staff successfully reinstated the erroneously purged voters in time for the primary.

After the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (the state's election board) rejected a proposal in July to retroactively implement a no "match, no vote" policy for all voters who registered since 2006, on September 10, the Attorney General sued the board seeking to force such a policy right before the election. The Board conducted an audit of its voter rolls and found a 22% match failure rate, including for 4 of the 6 members of the board. On October 23, 2008, the court dismissed the Attorney General's lawsuit, after concluding he lacked standing to bring the case; HAVA did not require the Government Accountability Board to link voters' eligibility to a successful match; and that doing so would violate the materiality provision of the Voting Rights Act.

On September 8, the Florida Secretary of State instructed election officials to reject voter registration applications that do not pass an error-prone computer match process. In the first three weeks of the policy, 15% of registrations were initially bounced because of failed computer matches; election officials were able to catch and correct obvious typos in about three quarters of these cases, but to date, more than 9,000 voters are being kept off the rolls. An analysis of the list reveals that African Americans make up 39% of blocked voters, and Latinos make up 34% of blocked voters whose race is known.

THE GOP'S WAR AGAINST FORECLOSED VOTERS

ACORN - News reports from Michigan, Ohio and Indiana have unearthed a GOP election strategy for suppressing votes by challenging voters at the polls using foreclosure filings as a basis to prove the voter no longer lives at that address

This kind of systemic challenge could further impact election results since even threats of such challenges can suppress voter turnout, particularly in minority and lower-income communities that have experienced voter suppression in the past. Many homeowners may appear on a foreclosure list but have since made arrangements with the lender, caught up, or could even remain living in the house well past the foreclosure.

There are many stages to the foreclosure process and given the current crisis, some lenders are choosing to negotiate with the homeowner or even let them remain in the home after foreclosure. Foreclosure lists only indicate that someone has had a foreclosure filed against them and does not prove that the homeowner no longer lives in that residence.

Furthermore, most jurisdictions require change of address notification only if the voter has moved out of the precinct within the last 60 days. Even if the homeowner has actually moved, they may still live in the precinct with a family member or as a renter. Federal law requires states to let people who have moved within their jurisdiction (usually defined as a precinct) to vote and update their registration at the polls.

However, of the millions of voters whose lives have been disrupted by foreclosure, some may have been too caught up on the chaos to notify election officials in a timely way of their change in address.

Using foreclosure figures from RealtyTrac, almost four million people could be challenged at the polls for living in a different location than the foreclosed home where they were registered to vote. According to RealtyTrac, there have been 1,965,681 foreclosure filings in as of August 31. Using Census estimates of 1.92 adults per household, that means 3,774,108 adults could be challenged and disenfranchised. In six states, the margin in the 2004 Presidential Election was smaller than the number of people who have faced foreclosure in 2008: Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin.

In July and August alone, there were enough foreclosure filings in Nevada to impact the outcome of the Presidential election. In fact, Las Vegas alone had 39,042 foreclosure filings during the first half of 2008, far more than the 21,500 margin in the Presidential Election in 2004 for the entire state. Similar efforts concentrated in Milwaukee could result in disenfranchisement of 12,622 potential voters, while the margin in 2004 for the state of Wisconsin was 11,384. In Albuquerque, there were 1,770 foreclosures filed meaning 3,398 voters could be challenged while the 2004 margin was only 5,988 for the entire state of New Mexico. Concentration of efforts to challenge foreclosure victims in urban areas of Ohio and Florida could disenfranchise a large enough portion of voters to impact the Presidential election. There have been 56,279 foreclosure filings in Ohio's five largest cities during the first half of 2008 meaning a potential 108,056 voters could be disenfranchised for foreclosure caging if efforts are concentrated in those metropolitan areas.

Citizens who have been voting at a precinct for years could be challenged because they fell behind on their mortgage payments and had an initial foreclosure notice filed against them. As an unprecedented number of voters are anticipated at the polls, this added delay is multiplied in precincts hit particularly hard by foreclosures resulting in the chaos of voting delays, long lines, and resolving disputes among partisan poll challengers and foreclosure victims.