Comments on Advance Indiana™: Democrats Oppose Efforts To Clean Up Voter Lists

What I don't get is why this is being done again. ...

2006-06-16T09:21:00.000-05:00

What I don't get is why this is being done again. Two summers ago (2004) Rokita sent out postcards to people who they suspected were duplicates on the list. As a college student, I was registered at home and then never unregistered when I signed up to vote at school. A lot of my friends were the same way and we all got postcards at both the places we were registered saying that they thought we may be duplicates and please take a moment to correct the error of there was one. What did Todd do with all of these??

I hadn't thought of the uniformity issue--thanks f...

2006-06-15T15:54:00.000-05:00

I hadn't thought of the uniformity issue--thanks for bringing that to my attention Jen. It seems to me that it could survive a constitutional challenge. You're simply taking a hard look at voters whose names appear more than once in the system. As long as you are looking at all such voters and not just those of one party or from one geographic area, it should survive a constitutional challenge--maybe I'm wrong though.

Gary,I like the middle ground solution, too, but I...

2006-06-15T15:38:00.000-05:00

Gary,

I like the middle ground solution, too, but I've been told that you have to apply whatever solution you choose uniformly to all voters, which I took to mean that you can't "identify" any specific voters for a mailing.

That's why we're proposing doing a statewide match of Department of Health, Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Social Security and Postal Service data before spending $1.5 million on a mailer.

I agree that there should be a middle ground. And we want to see the rolls cleaned up, too. But we want to see it done right.

I was just about to propose the same solution you ...

2006-06-15T15:30:00.000-05:00

I was just about to propose the same solution you did.

Of course an "opt in" voting strategy is the wrong way to go. I shouldn't have to continually sign up to vote over and over again if my address is correct already.

Flag the problem addresses and get them corrected, and be done with it.

We work with complex data issues like this every day at my job; some of these solutions are no-brainers, and it's surprising goverment officials don't realize how stupid they look when they play politics with them. On both sides of the aisle.