OK, I've read the articles. I'll ask about Maryland's procedures when I go to my election judge update training tonight. I'm pretty sure our procedure hasn't changed, and that it's in accordance with the federal law.
As you might guess, we do get people who come to vote and who've been purged from the voter rolls, for whatever reason. Usually we have them fill out a paper ballot and sign a statement. Those go into a locked bag that I deliver to the county elections office along with everything else after the polls close. The exceptions are people who have actually moved to a different precinct, and who come in to vote thinking they're still registered here. For them we call their new precinct, make sure it's the right place for them to vote, and send them on over. If they can't go there for whatever reason, we can allow them to fill out a paper ballot at our place voting only in those races that are common to their new precinct and ours.
Those sound much like the procedures we used when I worked elections in Fairfax Cty.
What we had a LOT of problems with were people who registered through Motor-Voter at the DMV. Because (at least as we were told by county elections officers), those papers went straight to Richmond, and if one of those voter forms was not FULLY filled out, it was simply destroyed, with no attempt made to clarify or retrieve full information from the voter and NO notification that their attempt to register had failed. Whereas if they had registered in the county, the registration official would have been right there to say "I can't take this--it doesn't have [x piece of information]."
So we would get people who showed up, certain that they had registered, and we had to tell them that they were not just in the wrong place but were not on the state voter rolls AT ALL. Not happy campers, as you can imagine.
I have sent Palast some $$. How does this keep happening? And do the Dems do it, or is it all/mostly the GOP? I can't believe this country puts up with this shit.
Excuse me, I have to go fret obsessively now... >:-(
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 04:20 pm (UTC)As you might guess, we do get people who come to vote and who've been purged from the voter rolls, for whatever reason. Usually we have them fill out a paper ballot and sign a statement. Those go into a locked bag that I deliver to the county elections office along with everything else after the polls close. The exceptions are people who have actually moved to a different precinct, and who come in to vote thinking they're still registered here. For them we call their new precinct, make sure it's the right place for them to vote, and send them on over. If they can't go there for whatever reason, we can allow them to fill out a paper ballot at our place voting only in those races that are common to their new precinct and ours.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 04:59 pm (UTC)What we had a LOT of problems with were people who registered through Motor-Voter at the DMV. Because (at least as we were told by county elections officers), those papers went straight to Richmond, and if one of those voter forms was not FULLY filled out, it was simply destroyed, with no attempt made to clarify or retrieve full information from the voter and NO notification that their attempt to register had failed. Whereas if they had registered in the county, the registration official would have been right there to say "I can't take this--it doesn't have [x piece of information]."
So we would get people who showed up, certain that they had registered, and we had to tell them that they were not just in the wrong place but were not on the state voter rolls AT ALL. Not happy campers, as you can imagine.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-09 03:42 pm (UTC)I have sent Palast some $$. How does this keep happening? And do the Dems do it, or is it all/mostly the GOP? I can't believe this country puts up with this shit.
Excuse me, I have to go fret obsessively now... >:-(