The F-up of all F-ups, or, you can't vote

[depechemodefan]

I don't know whose fault this is.

The library has voters registration forms. I forgot the cut off date to register to vote, let's say Sept. 17. You fill out the form but have to mail it. Postage is included so you don't have to pay.

So it's October, and I'm at the front desk. Guy comes up asking for a form to fill out to be a member of the library. I send him to another desk. He comes back with voter registration forms and ask if we have more of them. I was thinking he was a quack or an asshole who would take all our voter forms so I told him "no." He then told me he works with the Count Clerks office and the voters registration forms were invalid. They needed a barcode on them and he was going to take the ones we had and will bring new ones tomorrow.

I told a manager and the manager asked me if I saw an ID. I told her "no" but that I will tell the secretary of the chief.

I then called a number on the back of the forms I did have that was for some State office. I was told that the voters forms need to have the barcode or else the Post Office would not deliver them. Looking on the form I see the date is for 2007 and the new voter registration forms have a date of 2011.

So a bunch of would-be voters who filled out the forms will not be registered to vote. They won't get their registration cards in the mail, and won't be listed. I don't know whose fault is this. The County Clerk for not mailing it to us? Or maybe they were mailed to us but no one put them out? The State said we would have gotten a letter about the change, but goodness knows who would have gotten it.

[bhskittykatt]

Umm....oops?

Yeah, that's an oops. That's a really big oops. Big oops.

[Gurndigarn]

I hope, from the very bottom of my heart, that you're not in a swing state with a close vote. The last thing we need is a recap of Florida 2000. Anyone who thinks your vote doesn't count, it does. Sometimes, it even counts and recounts and recounts and recounts and...

[Ghel]

One of the nice things about Minnesota is that you can register to vote right at the polling place. The workers hand you a form, you fill it out, produce some verification of residence (a piece of mail is enough for that), and then you can vote. I wish more states would adopt this.

ETA: And there's none of these "provisional ballots" I hear that other states have. When I first registered to vote, at the polling place, they handed me the same ballot they handed everybody else.

[raudf]

In our state, you get multiple chances to register. Any time you visit a government building and fill out paperwork, in fact. Going to pay your personal property tax? "Have you registered to vote yet?" Go to apply for WIC? "Are you also registered to vote?" Car Tag renewal online? "check mark here if you would like to register to vote..."

The state even made a point of telling us that if a form might be out of date, it'd still be accepted because they have so many ways to register that they don't always know what they've updated.

[Cia]

There's a bit of a scandal going on in my hometown right now. When you fill out the forms to renew or apply for a SD drivers license there's a line asking if you would like to register to vote, with a box for 'No' and a box for 'Yes'. Turns out several people who had checked 'Yes' were turned away at the polling places because they weren't registered. They complained, their drivers license applications were examined and it turns out that the checks in the 'Yes' boxes were crossed out and checks were placed in the 'No' boxes. Let's just say someone just might end up in state or federal prison over this.

[EricKei]

We do it motor-voter style here too. You get registered by default, unless you specifically ask/check a box to opt out.

[Chromatix]

As I mentioned in another thread, the central population register handles all sorts of things over here. Among them are taxation and voter eligibility. As a permanent resident, I'm automatically registered to vote in municipal elections - but because I'm not a Finnish citizen, I can't vote in parliamentary or presidential elections. But I don't have to fill in any forms either way.