Sunday, September 21, 2008

Registration mailers from Women's group can disenfranchise you

Not so innocent. They're at it again. Women's Voices, Women Vote, aka The Voter Participation Center. Sending out registration forms to people already registered, sometimes with incorrect information, mispelled name or incorrect address.

We all thought that besides the illegal and very misleading robo calls in North Carolina that WVWV was basically "harmless" except for them swamping election officials with redundant forms for voters who were already registered. And that they were only inconsiderate jerks for sending registration forms to people who had been deceased for 5 years or more, or for sending registration forms to 8 year olds, or to people who are already registered.

IF people aren't careful, and send in the WVWV registration form, they may be sending in a form that misspells their name or has a small detail wrong, has a wrong address, or other mistake which in turn could get that person kicked off of the rolls.

Election directors tell me that voters often don't notice if/when WVWV has put the wrong address on the registration form. The voter sends the form in, and the BoE changes the voters address to match the one on the WVWV form. This could change your polling place location or even cause you to get a provisional ballot or even get you kicked off the rolls.
Considering that Florida and 4 other states are requiring strict matching for new registrations or they block your registration, this is awful.

WVWV goes by the name of http://www.voterparticipationcenter.org/ also.

Here's a note from a Florida voter who got 2 of the scam registration forms, posted to one of my blogs:

I got a fake voter registration form twice from http://www.voterparticipationcenter.org/ instructing me to send my registration to Florida Department of State-Divison of Elections in Tallahassee,Fl I am registered to vote in my county just like everyone else. First big envelope was large and offical looking the second using my middle name came from Boston Mass. Some stinky pooh is going on here Wish I had not thrown first envelope away,but I have the second piece of misleading caging garbage.so there is a concerted effort to mislead voters.It says if you are not sure call 1 866-308-6739

Who is WVWV trying to help? Many of their Board members are former or current staffers for either of the Clintons. Many of the BoE have businesses that receive contracts from WVWV.
Perhaps friends of the Clintons could address this potentially disenfranchising scheme.

0 comments: