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FL peeps: I'm starting to worry I may not be able to vote...
Have any of you all heard about the new law in place that says your driver's license or ID must match up identically with your voter's registration card?
Ie, if your DL says Jane Elizabeth Smith and your voter's registration card says Jane E. Smith, you would be given a provisional ballot, not a regular one and your vote may not be counted.
I first heard about it a few weeks ago and tried to check with my Dept. of Elections several times--left more than one message and never got a call back. I'm a little worried because my name is not hyphenated--not on my SS, not on my DL, not on my paychecks at work. Nowhere.
But my registration card hyphenated my name. I never sent it in to them requesting a hyphen, but they put it there anyway.
I voted in the primary without any problem, but yesterday, while watching the local news, they brought this up again--and specifically mentioned hypens and how your name better match up exactly.
I'm a little freaked.The spelling matches. The address matches. EVERYTHING matches--except that d@mn hyphen.
I'd been planning to wait until election day--just because I like the thrill of voting that day!--but H and I have decided to go do early voting this weekend. I figure if something happens and they turn me down, at least I'll have five business days to physically TAKE myself down to the registration office and force them to give me a new card, sans hyphen.
Have you guys heard of anyone having problems with this new "exact match" thing?
Re: FL peeps: I'm starting to worry I may not be able to vote...
Thanks, Zoe.
I actually first heard about this when RFK Jr. was talking about this on Air America a few weeks ago. I'm glad he's still getting people to pay attention. It piqued my interest then and I made the phone calls.
I kept telling myself I was being paranoid--that I voted in 2004 with no problems, some local elections since then with no problems and in the primary with no problem.
But when I heard the hyphen specifically, I got a little riled up! That's for sure...especially WHEN HELLO, BROWARD COUNTY SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS, I NEVER ASKED FOR A HYPHEN!
"The GOP" doesn't decide who gets a provisional ballot and who doesn't. Sorry to burst your conspiratorial bubble but challengers do nothing but challenge. It's up to the gov't and their elections workers (which are bipartisan at each precinct) to actually decide whether or not someone gets a provisional ballot.
Ugh, this sucks. I don't have any suggestions for you other than what pp have said, but good luck! I hope it works out!
I've never even heard of having voter registration cards. (Am I just an idiot? I've been registered to vote in both Texas and Indiana, and I never remember having a card.) I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage you to write to your state legislators to argue on behalf of election-day registration. EDR eliminates a lot of these problems and increases voter turnout by reducing barriers to voting. Yay EDR!
Umwife- I just googled around and found that the "no match no vote" thing (1) only applies to people who registered after September 8 and (2) the people with mismatched information are being sent letters from their local election officials with instructions to solve this problem before election day. These particular people just need to provide a valid ID to fix the problem. If they don't do it before election day then can do it after and their vote will still count.
So this doesn't affect you in any way.
http://www.miamiherald.com/979/story/703761.html
Riiiiiiiiight.
And I suppose there wasn't an active attempt by Republicans to manipulate judges into prosecuting voter fraud that didn't exist. Please.
The full article is here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote
Thanks everyone...
I actually just sent an email to one of my best friends who's a lawyer and has done some poll-watching, monitoring in the past. And now I'm looking in our archives to see if we've written a piece similar to that Herald story--just for my own curiosity, lol.
I'll keep you posted. I think we're going to go try and vote early this weekend anyway. H really doesn't want to wait until election day (his schedule is far less flexible than mine) so maybe we'll make it a nice Sunday afternoon. I have a feeling we're going to have to wait in line if we go this weekend...most of our local polling places are reporting waits anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours. Yipes!
umwife- try this link. it's like a FAQ from your state gov't:
http://www.dos.state.fl.us/news/communications/pressRelease/pressRelease.cfm?id=330
Don't lecture me about helpful. See: your Mickey Mouse comment above.
A friend of mine, who has lived and been registered to vote in the Bronx for over 2 years now, is still apparently registered in her hometown. So her mom could vote twice. Or she could vote in the Bronx and then fly to California and vote there. Unforunately (or fortunately, since she's a dem
), her grandmother works at the polls and would know she was committing fraud.
my read shelf:
my read shelf:
umwife, can you make it to the elections office and correct your information? If the same woman is working the main section that was there when I registered at 18, and I expect she is b/c she's been there forever, she should be able to help you. She's wonderfully nice, been a member of my parents church for a long time, and I'm sure she'd get it straightened out so you have no future problems. I can't remember her name. It's either Carol or Sue. Big difference, I know, but I my mind is blanking.
I find this all amusing in a very sad way. Broward county still has me on the list despite the fact that I've now been registered to vote in 4 other states since registering in FL. Yay for voter purges that never touched me! They still send me new copies of my registration card which, btw, I've never received in any other state.
No, not at all.
If you're allowed to tell me I'm not helpful, I'm allowed to point out your unhelpful comments.
Why the double standard, caden?
The first comment of mine was an obvious joke. You might note that I followed it up with 2 helpful links in other posts. You just promulgated a hoax - that a political party has the power to decide which voters get provisional ballots. They don't and it's wrong to mislead people that they do b/c it might make them become victims when they could and should know better.
If the rules that govern who gets a provisional ballot are set by elected or appointed leaders, then it is partly determined by party, ie the ruling party that passed those laws.
The laws are passed by the legislature and implemented by election boards and local officials which are made up of both parties and both are accountable to their higher ups and the people, unlike poll challengers.
Provisional ballots ARE counted AFTER you provide the information proving the registration is valid. Yes, that requires a 2nd visit to an official office with proper documentation.
Some states have more registered voters than they have residents. Some purging is called for.