Disenfranchised In Nevada

An anonymous reader writes "If you are a Democrat and you decided to register to vote in Nevada through non-official channels, you may have gotten disenfranchised by a private voter registration company. In this news article, it appears that employees of 'Voters Outreach of America' have been busy tearing up registration forms, specifically those from Democrats. The article indicates that hundreds to thousands of voter registrations may have been trashed. Unfortunately, the deadline to register to vote in Nevada has already passed."

Comments

Non-party affiliated registration

[chitownIrish]

... is the answer. The requirement that you declare a party affiliation seems only to be a way of locking in the two-party system.

apparently oregon too

[joey_knisch]

http://www2.kval.com/x30530.xml?ParentPageID=x2649 &ContentID=x47627&Layout=kval.xsl&AdGroupID=x30530 Same company. This time in oregon. I hope these people pay for their crimes.

Re:List of this groups backers. MAJOR GOP SUPPORTE

[rev_sanchez]

A GOP funded organization stole the name from the real America Votes to help perpetuate this fraud. Aside from disenfranchising dozens? hundreds? thousands? of Democrats I think one of the biggest tragedies is that the real, non-partisan America Votes will be hurt by this. I don't blame you for being confused, that was the point.

link 1

link 2

Text:
(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at Democrats. The focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.

The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.

It's going to take a while to sort all of this out, but the immediate concern for voters is to make sure you really are registered.

Call the Clark County Election Department at 455-VOTE orclick here to see if you are registered.

The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.

election day voter registration

[putch]

this wouldn't be an issue (or much less of one) if we'd scrap all of the hoops you need to jump through to vote. the time for election day voter registration is here. it's the fucking 21st century already. i can have pretty much any consumer item in the world (except duk nukem forever) shipped to me tommorrow, over the internet, but i have to mail in my form 25 days before the election? and 60! before a primary?

HAVA is going to require every state to maintain a centralized voter reg database. with such a system on-demand voting could mean:

1) no more voter reg deadlines. show up give them your name and you vote
2) vote from any poll site. can't make it back to your home before 9? just vote at the most convenient site. a voting kiosk will display the proper ballot for your election district
3) no over-voting. everyone gets one vote, no voting in two districts. in ny it is possible, though illegal, to register in many different counties, since they all keep their own records and dont share (at least not well enough).

Re:Standards?

[hamburger lady]

I have no doubt that these things are largely caused by crooked individuals and not some vast conspiracy on the part of the political parties involved

seeing as how the guy who runs the company behind these shenanigans is funded by the RNC (and is the ex-head of a state republican committee), i'd look at the situation a little deeper.