In what has been described repeatedly by the two presidential candidates and media pundits as the most important national election in decades, if not our lifetime, county registrars across the nation have seen huge surges in new voter registration and have expectations of unprecedented voter participation in the General Election next month.
The boost in voter interest has also brought a wealth of troubling questions, including whether all new votes will be counted and how trustworthy are the new electronic balloting machines, as well as concern regarding documented cases of electoral manipulation and fraudulent voter registration.
Allegations of electoral mismanagement and fraud since the disputed 2000 presidential election have been hotly discussed on the Internet and in other media. Grassroots citizen activism groups have exploded across the country, with accusations aplenty of voters being illegally purged from rolls in Ohio to denying students the right to register on campus in Colorado.
Judy Alter, director of the nonpartisan Protect California Ballots, summed it up, saying, “You cannot take for granted that your registration status is safe. There have been too many documented problems.”
Los Angeles County has the largest number of registered voters (more than four million) in the nation. A consolidation of precincts (from 5,026 to 4,379) in the 2008 primary election resulted in many instances of voters being purged from rolls or being registered with incorrect party affiliation, voters being misinformed of polling locations, polling places running out of ballots and other problems that led to the disenfranchisement of voters.
And that was only on Election Day.
Several instances have been reported of voters being apparently reregistered with fraudulent information.
Tiffany Hofstetter is a student at California State University Northridge and a registered Democrat. But when she received her 2008 primary election absentee ballot while out of state, she was dismayed to find that she had been sent a Republican ballot.
“I didn’t have time to get a new ballot, so my vote didn’t count in the primary,” Hofstetter said.
When she investigated with the county registrar’s office, she found that her party affiliation had been switched.
“But when I looked at the registration form they had on file, it had all this wrong information,” Hofstetter said. “My birth place was wrong, the last four digits of my Social Security number were wrong and the signature wasn’t mine. Someone else had filed this registration form in my name.”
The form had been filed by a voter registration organization called YPM, which stands for Young Political Major. Any time a voter reregisters with the county, whether because of an address change or a move to new party affiliation, the registrar’s office is obligated by law to send out a notification to the registered voter. Hofstetter never received such notification and filed a complaint with the Secretary of State’s office.
Meanwhile, YPM activities have been brought under scrutiny in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. San Bernardino County Democrats recently demanded an investigation by the local district attorney when they discovered in a poll that 27 of 33 formerly registered Democrats they contacted were “shocked” to find that their party affiliation had been switched to Republican, according to local news accounts.
Hector Barajas, spokesman for the California Republican Party, confirmed that YPM was hired to work for the GOP in California and had been issued thousands of voter registration forms. But he insisted that there are in place several verification procedures to ensure that any voter registrations filed are valid.
“All our volunteers wear T-shirts clearly indicating that they are Republicans,” Barajas said. “And we send out post cards to new registrants, as well as follow up with a voice mail message to make sure they know they are registered with the Republican Party.”
County Board of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky expressed concern regarding Hofstetter’s case.
“We take allegations of fraud in our voting system very seriously,” Yaroslavsky said. “We’ve spoken to (county registrar) Dean Logan about this case and he is referring it to the District Attorney’s Office.”
Jane Robison, in District Attorney’s Steve Cooley’s office, confirmed that YPM is under investigation with the county Public Integrity Division.
Whereas a misidentified party affiliation will not disenfranchise a voter in a general election, like next month’s, party-specific ballots are issued in primary elections. And voter registration statistics help candidates raise funds in local campaigns, so any skewering of those stats has influential consequences.
Robin Gibson, who works for the Los Angeles Election Protection Network Task Force, said all voters should take the opportunity to verify they are registered with the county before Oct. 20, particularly if they have moved since the last election.
“In the primary, we had reports of dozens of people showing up at their regular polling place and finding that their names weren’t on the register,” Gibson said. “Most of those people went home without voting.”
Adding to Gibson’s concerns is the county’s new automated Election System Help Desk, a computer program designed to help the county deal with any problems that arise on Election Day.
“The system is completely computerized,” Gibson said. “So, for the first time in L.A. County, there will be no paper trail to show what problems might come up. And computers are hackable.”
Alter urged all voters to, in addition to verifying registration status by Oct. 20, check that there have been no last-minute precinct changes a few days before the election.
Meanwhile, Hofstetter has verified her voter registration status and urged all her friends, many first-time voters, to do the same.
“We keep hearing from the grown-ups that we should be responsible and vote,” she said. “Then something like this happens. It makes us wonder if we should bother to vote at all.”
To verify registration status, voters may call the registrar’s office at 562.466.1310 or 800.481.8683. To check precinct status just before Election Day, visit the registrar Web site at www.lavote.net