Will Foreclosures Affect Voting Rolls?

(AP)  Election officials worry that the state's home foreclosure problem will pose a problem this November for voters still registered at their former address, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Voters in pivotal Ohio with outdated addresses face possible pre-election challenges and trips to multiple polling places. They also are more likely to cast provisional ballots that might not be counted.

"It's a real issue," said Daniel Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor who specializes in elections. He wonders whether foreclosures might explain the increasing percentages of provisional votes cast between 2004 and Ohio's latest election, the presidential primary in March.

Ohio provided President Bush with an 118,000-vote victory in 2004, giving him the electoral votes he needed to win the election.

Nearly 3,700 people are registered to vote at Columbus addresses the city lists as vacant, according to records maintained by the city's code-enforcement office and the Franklin County Board of Elections, The Columbus Dispatch reported.

The number of voters on the move is higher than that. The Franklin County Board of Elections sent notices in January to about 27,000 residents who had filled out change-of-address forms but failed to update their voter registrations.

Only about 10,000 had responded through the end of May, but deputy elections director Matthew Damschroder said that partly accounted for a 25 percent increase in new registrations and address changes compared with 2004.

Voters - not the county - are responsible for keeping registrations current. Boards of health send regular updates so they can remove dead people from the rolls.

In Franklin County, people who are alive and registered but don't vote are removed after sitting out eight years of elections.

Ohio's requirement that voters show identification at the polls makes it more important that they keep their registration information current, said Jeff Ortega, a spokesman for Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's elections chief.

In 2004, the Ohio Republican Party challenged more than 31,000 newly registered voters statewide after letters it mailed out came back as undeliverable. The challenges failed, but Brunner said a new state law requiring counties to mail their own notices to all registered voters could lead to another round of pre-election challenges.

Columbus ranked 32nd among U.S. cities in the number of foreclosure filings during the first quarter of 2008, according to RealtyTrac, a Web site that lists homes on the market in most cities. Cleveland, Dayton, Akron, Toledo and Cincinnati also were among the top 50, and Ohio was ninth among states during May, with one filing for every 410 homes.

Other battleground states rank high in foreclosure filings as well: Nevada led the nation in May with one filing for every 118 homes, while Florida was fourth, Michigan fifth, Georgia sixth, Colorado seventh and New Jersey 10th.

Franklin County GOP Chairman Doug Preisse didn't rule out challenges before Nov. 4. He said his party wants "clean, accurate voter lists."

As it did in 2004, the Ohio Democratic Party is putting together a "voter-protection" plan to fight eligibility challenges.

[minnick8-2009]

While I am in agreement with this the farmers who wrote the constitution did not fully trust democrocy that is why they wrote it the way they did.

Posted by antoniof123

That is not true. The trusted Democracy, they looked around at the uneducated masses and determined that they didn''t think those masses would be able to cast an informed vote. This would be especially true since mass communication and dissemination of information were difficult. Consequently, the electoral college was created.

The electoral college is out-dated, out-moded, obsolete, and insulting. It is insulting that there are "super-delegates," whose votes count for 10,000 or something like that,of the vote of the normal, lowly citizens'' votes. We the people should DEMAND the abolishment of the electoral college and superdelegates. Everyone should have a vote, and everyone''s vote should count.

[frootloop47]

Boy! I dorked the last post up.
What peeves me, is down here in Texas, we''''ve got a Govenor that got re-elected with just 34% of the popular vote. Sixty Six percent of citizens to trust him. That''''s ridiculous. An elected official should have to earn at least 51% of the vote.

[frootloop47]

What peeves me, is down here in Texas, we''ve got a Government that got re-elected with just 34% of the popular vote. Seventy Six percent of citizens to trust him. That''s ridiculous. An elected official should have to earn at least 51% of the vote.

[frootloop47]

There is a good write up on Wiki about the Electoral College. There are some protection to democracy I hadn''t thought of before reading it.

Albeit, I think there is a better way of doing elections. (local, state, and national)

[mh4cbs1]

Canada uses paper ballots. They are easily cast, counted and reported. They are easily verified.

The US now uses electronic voting machines that have been proven can be hacked, that often have no paper trail, that are expensive and difficult to maintain, that have code that is not open, where only the companies who write the software know how the counting is really being done.

The data has shown that the problems are: too few machines in poor neighborhoods with lines of several hours; hacked machines; kicking legitimate voters off the voting lists; no paper trail.

So why are government ID the solution to the above? Of course it is not the solution, but rather just one more way to keep people from voting out the corporate-serving GOP candidates.

[antoniof123]

I agree with others. The electoral college is useless. Our nation (the people, not ''''states'''') should elect the President. That way, every vote would count the same. That''''s the way it should be.

Posted by OneWorldUSA at 01:08 AM : Jul 07, 2008

While I am in agreement with this the farmers who wrote the constitution did not fully trust democrocy that is why they wrote it the way they did.

That said they did make a provision called amendent to the constitution. So what is stopping us maybe too many people are just too lazy to fix it.

[andor3]

"Every State needs the Voter ID law that Indiana has."

It is illegal to require a certain government-issued ID to vote, any proof of citizenship is adequate. You do not a state picture ID and you do not need an address and anyone who tries to stop you from voting in those cases needs to be educated loudly, quickly, and with as much force as necessary.

[sistatee-2009]

The poling centers have been foreclosed! There ain''t no place to vote!

[oneworldusa]

I agree with others. The electoral college is useless. Our nation (the people, not ''states'') should elect the President. That way, every vote would count the same. That''s the way it should be.

[oneworldusa]

Uh, yeah....

So, are they worried about losing votes from the McMansions crowd, or the hard-working people who have and are being displaced by Bush''s economy??

Solution: Let voters vote where they will and use the purple ink finger method to be sure nobody votes twice. Solved.