Some residents find they're not on the voter list

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This article is from today's Trenton Times.

http://www.nj.com/news/times/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1225425969210880.xml&coll=5

Some residents find they're not on the voter list
Friday, October 31, 2008
BY MEIR RINDE

Andrew Alexander had an unpleasant surprise when he stopped by the office of the Mercer County superintendent of elections this week.

Though he says he registered to vote at the motor vehicle office in Trenton two months ago, the elections office had no record of it.

And he's not the only one who has run into problems trying to register at a motor vehicle office, Superintendent of Elections Bettye Monroe said.

Though she said her office has received hundreds, possibly thousands of such registrations without problems, Monroe also has a pile of 295 incomplete voter registration forms. Of those, 142 that lack signatures probably originated at motor vehicle offices, she said.

"We have a basket out there," she said. "It's not a lot, but it's enough."

Alexander, of Pennington Avenue in Trenton, said he had gone to the motor vehicle office to pay a surcharge.

"I said, let me go ahead and register," he recalled. "They said, we'll take care of everything."

But he called the state Motor Vehicle Commission when he discovered the problem and they were unable to help him, he said.

On Election Day, people whose names don't appear on poll lists may use a provisional ballot and their registration will be checked. People who are not registered will not have their votes counted.

Those who are not listed, and who want to make sure they are registered, may go before a judge who will decide whether to issue an order allowing them to vote.
For Alexander and others who go to Monroe's office on Election Day and find they are not registered, the office's chief of investigations will escort the person to the county courthouse on Broad Street for review by a judge, she said.

With a large turnout expected for the presidential election, a relatively high number of voters with registration problems may petition the court on Tuesday, Monroe said. Three Superior Court judges will be on call to handle such cases.

Statewide, more than 540 deputy attorneys general will handle court applications from voters and provide legal advice to local elections officials, Attorney General Anne Milgram said yesterday. In past years lawyers for the Republican and Democratic parties have also been on hand on Election Day.

Because the Motor Vehicle Commission has been subject to complaints that it has not offered voter registration forms to all drivers license applicants, as required by federal law, anyone who can prove to a judge that they were at a motor vehicle office before Oct. 14 will be allowed to vote, Monroe said.

If Alexander did register, a record of the transaction should exist, said Susan Evans, a spokeswoman for the Department of State and the Division of Elections.

Registrations consist of two parts -- an electronic record and a signature card -- and if the card doesn't show up at a local elections office, that triggers an alert for officials to send a letter to the voter, she said.

However, the system has not always worked. This summer, after a batch of 57 completed voter-registration signature cards from the Motor Vehicle Commission turned up in a package shipped to Bermuda, The Times contacted several of those voters and none recalled receiving a letter.

In that case, the cards were eventually passed on to The Times, which gave them to the Division of Elections. Division director Robert Giles said that even if the cards had not turned up, those people could have voted by provisional ballot.

Alexander said he'll bring his surcharge payment receipt with him on Election Day to show he was at the motor vehicle office before the Oct. 14 deadline. But he said he's disturbed by the way the state seems to have lost track of his registration.

"The whole idea that in a public place like that, they have no record of that, that's what to me is incredible," he said.

Contact reporter Meir Rinde at [e-mail] or [phone].

I posted a thread in General Discussion with information from every state for voters to check their eligibility. It didn't get much attention. But here we are just a little over four days before the election and The Trenton Times runs a story on voters who think they are registered but aren't.

I checked my eligibility by calling the county clerk's office. The person who answered the phone seemed surprised at my call. I'd rather have someone at the clerk's office surprised by my call than to be surprised myself at the polls on Election Day.

DOUBLE CHECK YOUR ELIGIBILITY TODAY.