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Monday, October 02, 2006
ACTION ALERT: Help Needed NOW on Returned Voter Registration Cards
From Terry Riley:
A couple of weeks ago I saw a news report on Channel 13 where Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Hererra claimed that 200,000+ voter ID cards had been returned as undeliverable. In that same report Secretary of State Vigil-Giron stated that those voters would be purged from the voter list. The New Mexico voter list is something over 1,100,000 if I am correct. That is close to one-fourth of all of the registered voters in New Mexico whose cards were returned. I know that the news always reports that a very low percentage of the eligible voters actually vote but some of these 200,000 voter IDs must belong to otherwise eligible voters.
Paul Stokes and I contacted Mary Hererra and Ernie Marquez, Director of Elections in the Secretary of State's office and asked for confirmation of the story. Everything was accurate EXCEPT that the voters would not be purged. They would be marked inactive and if they fail to vote in the next two elections then they will be purged. That was good until he said, most likely! I asked for clarification and it ended with probably.
To shorten this story I will say that the best possible things are being done to solve this potential problem. The Secretary of State is running public service announcements on TV explaining that if you did not receive your plastic voter ID card that there may be some problem with your voter registration and that you should contact your county clerk as soon as possible and correct any errors. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party have both asked for and received copies of this list. Governor Richardson's campaign is calling all Democrats on that list and notifying them that they need to check with their county clerk as well as adding this list to their state wide walk list.
HELP!
Now that we have support on contacting the people whose voter ID cards were returned we have been asked to help. I guess that is reasonable. I know that many people are volunteering at different campaigns to help candidates get their message out.
We need people to volunteer to Ana Canales at Governor Richardson's campaign to call people who were affected by the returned voter ID cards. This is really important and it is important that it is done ASAP, because the deadline for new registration is 10 October. The Governor's campaign phone number is 828-2455. Please call and PLEASE VOLUNTEER!
Terry Riley
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October 2, 2006 at 08:11 PM in Democratic Party, Election Reform & Voting, Guest Blogger | Permalink
Comments
What cluster f**k!
MORE hoops to jump through so you can vote.
Posted by: qofdisks | Oct 2, 2006 11:13:37 PM
Terry says above:
"Paul Stokes and I contacted Mary Hererra and Ernie Marquez, Director of Elections in the Secretary of State's office and asked for confirmation of the story. Everything was accurate EXCEPT that the voters would not be purged. They would be marked inactive and if they fail to vote in the next two elections then they will be purged. That was good until he said, most likely! I asked for clarification and it ended with probably."
All of those 200,000 or so are eligible voters, or they would not have been sent voter cards.
So they are treated no differently than any other voter: if they don't vote for 2 (Congressional) elections (for 4 years) they are marked inactive and may be purged, according to the Motor Voter law, which allows purging no more often than after every Presidential election.
Some of them should have been found by campaigns using walklists -- walkers will find out that the voter doesn't really live there, even though they still vote in that district. It's still important for campaigns to try to contact them to encourage them to vote if they are supporters, but it's not the emergency portrayed. Election workers at the county clerk's office tell me that lots of people are heeding the call and re-registering at their correct address. I did some of them at the State Fair recently.
Posted by: Michelle Meaders | Oct 3, 2006 12:31:37 PM
The problem is that not all election workers know or follow the rules. This has the potential of creating confusion at the polls, and also provides a potential opportunity for Republican slimes to cause a ruckus there. Better to get things straight before election day.
Posted by: I Vote | Oct 3, 2006 1:08:55 PM
A young woman that I had talked to in August said she never got a card. I checked back with her and she finally got a card by re-registering at the Clerk's office.
Posted by: | Oct 3, 2006 1:26:06 PM
