IMPORTANT: How to check your voter registration

[undeterred]

How To Check Your Voter Registration:

Online Check for Non-Madison Residents:
Go to the GAB web site at http://vpa.wi.gov/
Go to "Look Up Your Voter Registration and Polling Place Location"
In the boxes, enter your last name, first name, and birth date (mm/dd/yyyy)
Click on SEARCH
If you are registered, your name and address should appear.
If it doesn't work, click on "Clear" and try again.
If there is a problem with your registration, contact your local elections office (city or village clerk, etc.).

People who registered prior to 2003 and did not provide a Date of Birth may be getting letters asking them to provide this information - which is now a required identifier.cYou can read about this and other elections related information, at the Government Accountability Board web site: http://elections.state.wi.us/index.asp

All Voters:
It would probably be prudent for everyone to check their registration information now to be sure they don't run into problems when they go to vote in November. It's also a good idea for everyone to take something official with them on election day that has their current address - drivers license, passport, utility bill, lease, etc. - just in case they do run into a problem voting (not being on the polling list, etc.).

Although same-day registration is allowed in Wisconsin, those of us who work at the polls strongly encourage everyone to register by Oct 15. This sure beats waiting in long lines to register on election day and makes our job much easier!!
Please pass this along to other Wisconsin voters.
Thanks

Online check for Madison Residents:
Go to www.ci.madison. wi.us/clerk/
Click on VOTER INFORMATION
Clink on VOTER PUBLIC ACCESS
Then click on: Look Up Your Voter Registration and Polling Place Location
In the boxes, enter your last name, first name, and birth date (mm/dd/yyyy)
Click on SEARCH
If you are registered, your name and address should appear.
If it doesn't work, click on "Clear" and try again.
If it still doesn't work, call the City Clerk's office at 608-266-4601.

Any Madison resident who is not already registered to vote can register up to Oct 15 at any Madison Public Library, Madison Fire Station, or the City Clerk's Office in the City-County Bldg.

[RevCheesehead]

1. OK, I'm registered in two different places!

Can I vote in each one? :evilgrin:

[Connonym]

2. This is odd -- I changed my address when I voted in the primary

and I got a postcard from the city verifying that I had changed my address for voting purposes but it still shows me at my old address. I've got to find out what I need to do about that. I think I should probably go get a new driver's license with my new address just to make sure they don't try to turn me away on election day. The utilities aren't in my name here and at the primary they let me use a medical bill with my address on it.

Thanks for posting this. I'm glad I checked.

[undeterred]

3. I think the City Clerk in your town is always the person to clarify this with

preferably when they are not super busy. But if Van Hollen is trying to cause confusion, these people will be busy.

[goddess40]

4. Thanks, I'll try to make this available at our dem headquarters.

it would be nice for people to check ahead of the election.

[mcctatas]

5. I have voted every year since 1992

and now they have no record for me?! :wtf: What am I supposed to do (Winnebago County)

[undeterred]

6. That is outrageous.

But that is exactly what I am afraid of. I have not moved in 8 years and I rarely miss an election. Fortunately my records are in place, but who knows what the Republicans will do.

Go to your city clerk and register to vote in person so you make sure you are registered by October 15 since there is a 22 day blackout before election day. Technically you can register on election day (bring a utility bill), although your name may still show up on the rolls. Or, you can just call your city clerk to check on it first.

[dragonlady]

7. you can probably register at city hall during the blackout period

I think the blackout is mainly for deputy registrars out in the field who may not turn in their forms in a timely manner. But it's best to get it taken care of early.

[mojowork_n]

8. Oops. My voter registration says "Mike", but the Driver's License

is some guy named, "Michael."

I voted in the Sept. primary -- no problem...

But if Van Hollen wins his suit, am I going to have to spend a lot of time arguing with some sort of vote-suppression goon squad, on election day?

[undeterred]

9. I would clear it up ahead of time.

Sometimes I use my middle initial, other times not. I would hate for something as trivial as that to get in the way.

[mojowork_n]

10. You're right. The names have to match.

I called the City of Milwaukee Election Commission this morning.

The person on the phone asked me my legal name, "What's on your birth certificate?"

The Social Security Card, as well the Driver's License, say "Michael" so I'm going
to have to go down to Room 501 of City Hall to change my voter registration.

There's an online form for voter registration name changes you can download and mail
in, but I'd rather take on the bureaucracy face to face, and get some sort of paper
receipt.

[undeterred]

12. Can you imagine how many people this affects?

I have a unique last name. There is no possibility of confusing me with anyone else in the entire country or world. So the middle initial thing - whether I use it or not - should make no difference. And I haven't moved in 8 years. But its possible for the same person to skip using their middle name entirely or use a middle intial or use a name. Not to mention maiden names, hyphenated names, etc. If they want to make it difficult for people to vote, this is the way to do it.

The reality is- when I go in to vote, the voting judges have been the same people for the last 8 years and they are all from my neighborhood, Democrats and Republicans. They pretty much know everyone. THAT IS THE WAY YOU COMBAT FRAUD, AT THE LOCAL LEVEL.

[mojowork_n]

14. It's still confusing.

I showed up at my local polling place for the Sept. 9th primary election, and although there was a little bit of apprehension -- the old guy from the gym who at least knew my face wasn't sitting behind the official table -- I was still allowed to vote.

Even with that awful discrepancy between the "Mike" registered to vote and the "Michael" on the drivers license, that they never asked to see.

I did go down to Room 501 at City Hall this afternoon, and changed my voter registration from "Mike" to "Michael," but there's STILL a lingering question -- when I'd called to ask about whether there was any confusion, the person from the Election Commission asked what name was on my birth certificate?

I had to tell him that the name on the birth certificate was neither "Mike" or "Michael," I was born as "Mihailo" -- I'm a naturalized citizen -- and "Mihailo" (Me-HIGH-Low) may have been written in the Cyrillic alphabet:

Михаилo

How do you translate that into a database that Van Hollen -- or the H.A.V.A. posse -- would recognize?

[undeterred]

15. I have no idea

and I doubt that the person from the Election Commission does either. Imagine how many different places Americans have been born and how many languages and alphabets our names have been written in.

The thing is... if you've got enough documentation to WORK in this country, you certainly must have enough to VOTE. And most of us seem to get through that barrier by showing a few documents, even if there are discrepancies.

[mojowork_n]

17. That's the whole point of the "Helping America Vote Act"

NOT to help, to make it more difficult, taking advantage of those "discrepancies," to do so.

Just like every other piece of mis-named Republican legislation.

[RevCheesehead]

18. I'd think the question should be "what's on your s.s.i. card?"

That's what they do with my dad re: medical records. (He goes by his middle name)

[mojowork_n]

19. Medical Records?

I'm not sure, but I think aliases might be as common in emergency rooms as they are in police station lock-ups. People without insurance (just like people suspected of crimes) trying to game the system.

[Connonym]

36. I have a hyphenated name and I just checked my registration status again

they have me at my old address with the correctly hyphenated name and at my current address with my name w/o a hyphen. Neither one of them has my middle initial, which is how I'm listed on my driver's license. What a clusterfuck. Because I don't want to get screwed on a technicality I'm going to go re-register in advance. Makes me wonder if they threw out my ballot from the primary because my name was incorrectly entered.

[PeaceNikki]

11. Interesting. There have been updates since last week

Last week there were 2 entries: one with previous address and one with current. Now there is only current.

[dragonlady]

13. Interesting program on WPR this morning about the voting process

There were some representatives from the League of Women Voters. They pointed out that some of the women who demonstrated in front of the White House to get the vote were hauled off to jail and basically tortured (strung up by their hands, force fed when they started a hunger strike). Early terrorists?

One interesting thing: there are (I believe they said) about 8,000 jurisdiction in the U.S. that administer elections, and 1,700 of them are in Wisconsin (every village and township). Most of them did not register voters until 2006 when HAVA required it. That's the date when Van Hollen wants the checking to go back to. So I'm thinking the small rural jurisdictions that just started registering, and are
likely to skew Republican, will also come up with mismatch problems.

The program also included the news that there will be performance artists at a dozen polling places in Milwaukee for this election. We'll see how that works out.

10:00 PM Kathleen Dunn - 09/22E
The 2008 Making Democracy Work Summit kicks off next week. After ten,
Kathleen Dunn talks with members of the League of Women Voters about
the upcoming elections, and the importance of making every vote
count. Guests:<br>10:00 – Mary Wilson, President, National League of
Women Voters.<br>10:30 – Andrea Kaminski, Executive Director, League
of Women Voters of Wisconsin.<br>10:30 - Pegi Taylor, Co-producer,
“My Vote Performs.”

[eyesroll]

16. Two hits for me--one correct, one at my college dorm.

Where I last voted in 1996. Bizarre.

[mojowork_n]

20. From the dept. of Redundancy Department

It may be mind-numbingly stupid, but you can't argue with a computer database.

Today's Greatest Thread, the RFK, jr. "hundreds of thousands of dem. voters" disenfranchised post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4071366

It's no joke.

[midnight]

21. Thanks for posting this. I've tried to see if I could find myself

but I don't come up. also I checked with the GAB about "People who registered prior to 2003 and did not provide a Date of Birth may be getting letters asking them to provide this information - which is now a required identifier.cYou can read about this and other elections related information, at the Government Accountability Board web site: http://elections.state.wi.us/index.asp"

I did get one of those letters and was told by, Steve Rossman at 608-261-2028,that I do not have to give out my birthdate.

[Lefta Dissenter]

22. I would not take the risk

the local election official who does not find you on the poll list will not care who said what.

Right or wrong, I'm encouraging people to verify their registration and to correct/provide any incorrect/missing data asap, and to vote early absentee IN PERSON as soon as ballots are available (after Oct 5). Despite my local reputation for tilting at windmills and fighting for what's right, (though often it might not be in my own best interest) I'm willing to be a sheep and give them everything they want in this specific situation, so my vote is not at risk. Wisconsin was blue by only 1 or 2 votes per precinct in the last two presidential elections.

WE CAN NOT AFFORD TO LOSE A SINGLE VOTE!!!

I would contact your clerk now, find out what is needed, and make sure you are fully registered immediately!!! That way, when the voter list is printed out, you'll be ON it, and you won't risk having to vote with a provisional ballot for some stupid reason.

You can be right, you can be dead right, but you also can be dead and right. Let's not say the same for your vote.

[undeterred]

23. Yesterday I had an email from someone who is 70

and she was dumped from the voter registration database since the primary. She has been voting in presidential elections in Wisconsin since 1956 and she no longer exists.

[dragonlady]

24. One reason why names might disappear

I think this has been noted on another thread but it bears repeating. It seems that when a voter dies, the computer also removes all other voters with that name. This sounds like poor systems programming (not a malicious intent to remove Democrats because the results are too random). This is exactly why everyone should check that their registration is still in the file, especially those with common names. At least we can be thankful that we have election-day registration so any mistakes can be corrected. It would be a nightmare to arrive and find you are not on the list and have no way to vote.

[undeterred]

25. I heard someone talking about the database file this morning

on the radio and he said that just because you can't find your record when you look it up online doesn't necessarily mean you aren't registered- especially if your DOB isn't in there. The only reliable way to check your voter registration is to talk to your clerk. :shrug:

[lizziegrace]

26. Thanks

I couldn't find mine in the system. I'm hoping the clerk has record.

[undeterred]

27. I guess the clerk ultimately has control over records

getting purged or not, which is good to know. So hopefully we have nonpartisan people in these positions. HAVA has made it a requirement for Drivers License to match up with voter registration. I don't know if this is such a great idea, especially for college students. I have always liked the idea that college students have the choice of voting where their parents live or based on their campus adress, and most of them don't change their DL while on campus because they move too often.

[lizziegrace]

28. This could be a problem

I don't have a Wisconsin license yet. I *did* send in a copy of a utility bill and a bank statement with my home address on them. I read the mail-in registrations carefully and sent it several weeks ago. I hope this won't be an issue.

[undeterred]

29. Remember that you can register on Election Day here

so as long as you bring those same items with you and allow time for it, you will get to vote. I have a feeling it will be a busy day, so if as many of the rest of us as possible vote early, that will help. Wisconsin does it right. Van Hollen can't screw it up.

Even though I voted early/absentee last time, I walked into my polling place on election day to make sure- and my name was checked off to show that my ballot had been received.

[dragonlady]

32. The addresses on the driver's license and voter registration don't have to match

This is what I was told by the state GAB help desk. It's the driver's license number and your name on the voter registration that have to match.

[mojowork_n]

30. Did you hear anyone talking about security issues?

I'm concerned that any online database is -- potentially -- capable of being "hacked."

I think that's actually one of the H.A.V.A. requirements, that voter registration lists should all be digitized. You can't do that much to alter ink-and-paper records, in a file cabinet somewhere in your city clerk's office. But when the final "master" list is an electronic record, the security issues multiply.

As far as I'm concerned, if more than one voter is removed from a list as a result of a single death, one person's criminal conviction, or one person moving out of state -- that's a threat to the integrity of the system as a whole.

[mojowork_n]

31. According to an Obama campaign worker, today,

...they work off of voter registration rolls. When making phone calls, working on "Get Out The Vote" door-to-door canvassing, and every other Vote-4-Barack rally the troops activity, ... that's the Master List.

So if someone's "disappeared" from the voter list, they 'don't have a way to get to that person.'

...and then, when the "disappeared" person shows up to actually vote, they're just another obstacle to the voting process, helping to hold up the line of voters. In those precincts that may have fewer vote-tabulating devices, than one would hope for.

[dragonlady]

33. However, once a person interacts with the campaign, they're in the system

New voters who register, rally participants, and volunteers all become known to the campaign. Moreover, the get-out-the-vote effort has never been limited to just the people on the voter list and I wouldn't expect this year to be any different. Any potential supporter who is found will be helped to become a voter, and same-day registration makes that possible up to the last minute.

The vote tabulating devices are not the problem--there is one per polling place, even if more than one ward votes there, and it works out okay. The bottleneck comes from a limited number of poll workers to serve the voters, combined with the extra observers (election protection, etc) who help to fill spaces that are often too small for the multitude of voters. (I observed at one polling place in September and wondered how on earth they will manage with the numbers expected in November.) The election commissions in Milwaukee and probably elsewhere try very hard to recruit poll workers, but it's a struggle. The effort to get many people to vote early (which is possible from now until Nov. 3) should help. Milwaukee is making it more conventient to vote early by having extended and weekend hours. http://www.milwaukee.gov/vote/InPersonRegistrationandAbsenteeVoting.htm

[mojowork_n]

34. Canvassing lists are culled from voter lists.

That's how the campaign knows which doors to avoid, and which to knock on. The master list/full database can be updated manually, but that's the main source.

If this post from the Greatest Threads list, today, is any indicator, people are disappearing from voter lists:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7377182

Although much attention this year has been focused on the millions of new voters being added to the rolls by the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, there has been far less notice given to the number of voters being dropped from those same rolls.

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters...

I'd really like to know what the numbers are, in Wisconsin. How many voters were listed in the state a year ago, at this time, how many new registrations have been added, or updated, and how many registrations... have been purged?

It seems like the sort of thing that would be worth the time and effort to check. Does anyone really think the Republicans are putting all their eggs in Van Hollen's basket?

As McCamy Taylor writes, today:

Remember Warren Mitofsky's truly off the wall Reluctant Responders Theory, in which he tried to explain the exit poll-vote discrepancy in Ohio by claiming that Republicans were predisposed to either avoid or lie to exit pollsters and that was why exit polls showed Kerry winning but the vote total went to Bush? It turned out that his theory only held true for precincts that did not use hand counted paper ballots. Hand counted paper ballots are the riskiest kind with which to commit election tabulation fraud, because the fraud is so easy to detect. So, if you are going to steal votes, you will do it with your e-voting precincts.

Once the locations with the suspicious totals are located, then it is just a matter of doing the recounts and audits and figuring out how the fraud was committed. I think that by election day Obama will be so far ahead that it will not matter what the Republican fraudsters do, but they will try to do it anyway. They can not help themselves. Stealing the vote has gotten to be a habit for them, and this year they feel especially emboldened.

I am looking forward to seeing some Republicans get prosecuted by the federal government for election fraud this time. I hope that it is one of the first priorities of the new Obama/Biden Department of Justice. The old Voting Rights Division has been gagged for too long. It is time that people learned to believe that when they go to the polls to vote their vote will really count.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4198921

...In three states — Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan — the number of people purged from the election rolls since Aug. 1 far exceeds the number who may have died or relocated during that period...

[dragonlady]

35. Actually, canvassers should not avoid any doors

Except where there's a big, vicious dog in the yard ;) . The voter list is just a snapshot of one point in time, and doesn't reflect people who move in or out, or die, or reach age 18. If new residents are found, their information can be added. And the voter list doesn't show the person's party preference, so one of the reasons to canvass (and phone bank) is to find out so the campaign knows which people to ignore and which to bring out to vote.

For years the voter list has been a problem. Anyone who has done phone banking knows that you may be faced with an address with two or more families listed for it. Who actually lives there? If one family has moved to Florida, they should be removed from the Wisconsin voting list. Some purging is valid, but some may be part of a plot to disenfrachise voters. The plotters have a harder time in Wisconsin, where anyone who is wrongly removed can reregister on election day. Of course that makes lines longer, but it's better than nothing. The states I'm really worried about are the ones that close registration before the election. It's another reason to go to vote early so any problems can be identified early and perhaps solved.

[mojowork_n]

37. The Latest Look at Election Theft

D.U.'er "Time for Change" put up a good overview of the whole election theft issue in a post last night:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7454833

The good news is that new Democratic voter registrations are surging everywhere. Or, almost everywhere. (Cuyahoga County, again, is lagging the rest of Ohio by half.)

I’ve discussed in detail in a previous post how purging of legally registered voters in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 enabled George W. Bush to win two presidential elections. To summarize briefly: Greg Palast showed (See pages 6-44) how approximately 92,000 voters, most of them Black (54%) and Democratic (90%), were illegally and purposely disenfranchised from the Florida 2000 election, thereby enabling Bush to win Florida and the general election by 537 votes.

A report by Victoria Lovegren described the apparently illegal purging of 165,224 voters from heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, Ohio, prior to the 2004 election, for no other specified rationale than that they hadn’t voted recently. In “Fooled Again – How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)”, Mark Crispin Miller documents how tens or hundreds of thousands of voters were purged from other Ohio counties as well, and how those purges were targeted against Democrats by using voting lists obtained from stolen computers...

The Greg Palast link in that excerpt ("Jim Crow in Cyberspace") is worth a click, if you're new to this topic, or have never heard of him. It was written a few years ago, but summarizes the record concisely:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Palast_Greg/JimCrow_Cyberspace_TBDMCB.html

...Wait, ...there's a breaking story at dKos that has some new, very disturbing, info. A court of appeals overturned the original ruling favoring the Secretary of State (Democrat Jennifer Brunner) in Ohio.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/15/1710/8917/699/630868

The GOP is intentionally undermining voter confidence in the electoral system despite having not a shred of evidence to prove any conspiracy to commit voter fraud. In fact, a five year investigation by the Bush Adminstration revealed only 120 prosecutable offenses of voter fraud in a nation where 100 million people turn out for presidential elections.

And now 600,000 people in Ohio could possibly lose their right to vote just so the GOP can "insure the integrity of the voting system." Just like the Clear Skies Act (which reduced air pollution controls) and the Patriot Act (which undermined the Constitution), we can always be sure that whatever Republicans are claiming to do, they are really doing the exact opposite.