Boards refuse to cooperate with efforts to help eligible voters who may have fallen through the cracks
ST LOUIS, MO – The voting rights groups Project Vote and the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) are working to make sure every eligible Missourian gets on the voter rolls, but boards of elections may be preventing eligible voters from voting in next week’s elections by hampering the efforts of groups to obtain lists of people who tried to register with the boards but whose applications were rejected.
These voter advocate groups use records of disqualified applications to remind eligible citizens to correct their applications or file new ones with no omissions if they want to vote on Election Day. But the Kansas City board maintains that it is illegal to provide the lists under Missouri law, notwithstanding that the St. Louis County and St. Louis City boards have already provided their lists. The Jackson County board has agreed to provide the list but only if Project Vote, the DC-based organization requesting it, pays $11,490.20 for the 1500 pages, over $7.50 per page. The average cost of similar public records requests from election boards nationwide, given approximately 1500 forms to copy and redact, is approximately $100 to $300.
“We are concerned that not all eligible Missourians have made it onto the voter rolls,” says Michael Slater, Executive Director of the voting rights advocacy group Project Vote. “We are working to protect and promote the right to vote by assisting eligible Americans whose registration forms were disqualified, but we need the participation of elections boards to obtain records of disqualified applications and help people repair their voter standing.”
The Registration Repair program is intended to serve as a backup to the efforts by busy election boards to contact applicants whose applications were not acceptable as submitted. The program operates in over 35 counties in a dozen states, reaching would-be voters by phone and mail. This program has resulted in valuable trouble-shooting to protect the voter standing of eligible voters.
Among the 1520 names on Jackson County’s lists of disqualified applications are 905 that it says it entered into the county’s registration system but then removed because the post office returned the notifications as undeliverable. Eliminating voters from the rolls based on returned mail disproportionately impacts voters in minority, low-income, and young populations, those who move more often and may live in dense urban areas with less reliable postal service.
“There are still thousands of Americans who believe they have completed a voter registration application and are registered to vote, but in fact are not,” said Brian Mellor, Senior Counsel at Project Vote, who explained that many registrations are rejected due to incomplete information, confusing application forms, or address problems. Many voters may not realize they are not on the rolls, waiting in a long line at their polling site only to discover that they are not registered.
“In Jackson County, we have been working for over six weeks to get this information in order to help Missourians repair their registrations,” said Jeff Ordower of Missouri ACORN. “Our democracy works best when every American participates. If we cannot reach out to those who did not make the rolls, their voices will not be heard on Election Day.”