(AK) 1/05 - 26,000 Absentee Ballots M...

Author Message   cedar Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: cedar Post Number: 2 Registered: 01-2005 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 9:26 am:        Absentee ballots requested, not returned Ketchikan Daily News, 15Jan2005 ANCHORAGE (AP) — State election officials aren’t sure why so many voters went to the trouble of getting absentee ballots for the 2004 general election, but never returned them. Election officials say about 26,000 absentee ballots were never returned. The low number of returns raises some questions. Did voters change their minds and vote at the ballot box or by fax? Did they decide not to vote? Did large numbers get ballots too late? There is some evidence for all three explanations, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Lawmakers and Lt. Gov. Loren Leman now are looking at changing the absentee system to help ballots get to voters faster. “As far as I am concerned, one person who didn’t get his or her ballot is too many,” Leman said. A total of 58,559 absentee ballots were mailed to voters and 32,075 were returned by the Election Day deadline, according to elections officials. In the previous presidential election, a much larger proportion was returned. More than 31,000 Alaskans sought absentee ballots in 2000 and 24,756 were returned. “It’s higher than I would want it to be, certainly,” said Laura Glaiser, director of the state Division of Elections. Some changed their registration to another state, and maybe some who requested a ballot just didn’t vote, officials said. Kathy Tarr put her request for an absentee ballot in the mail Oct. 20 from Pittsburgh. Her absentee ballot arrived Nov. 3, a day too late. “I’m one frustrated and angry Alaskan,” Tarr, a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote in an e-mail two days after the Nov. 2 election. She said this week that she still wants a good explanation. “It was upsetting to me. ... You talk about the guilt,” said Tarr, 49, a former member of the League of Women Voters. Leman said he has heard of fewer than 20 complaints from voters who didn’t get their ballots in time. A total of 187 absentee ballots were postmarked after Nov. 2, too late to count, said Tom Godkin, state election administrative supervisor. That’s about the same number as in the presidential election in 2000, he said. Many Alaskans who asked for absentee ballots through the mail voted in other ways. Some of them were among the 2,279 who voted by fax, about 900 more than in 2000. Poll watchers in Anchorage and the Mat-Su reported that voters walked into polling places with their absentee ballots and decided to vote a regular ballot, said Randy Ruedrich, chairman of the Alaska Republican Party. A push by political parties for absentee voting and voter registration may have played a role. Ruedrich said he doesn’t believe the registration push was so big that it resulted in people signing up who didn’t intend to vote. Statewide, the number of registered voters rose by about 17,000 from June to October, when 469,042 were on the voter rolls. A record 314,502 Alaskans voted. Ruedrich noted that some distant voters received two absentee ballots: one printed early, before there was a certified candidate list, and then the regular absentee ballot. That’s allowed under Alaska law in case voters don’t receive the regular ballot in time. In each of those cases, only one ballot was counted, but the total figure for ballots mailed out includes both types, inflating that number, Ruedrich said. The 2004 election saw a big increase in people seeking the special advance absentee ballots, according to elections officials. A change made in 2002 allowed voters within Alaska as well as those overseas to request them. Plus, more Alaska military members are deployed and sought the advance ballots. In this election, 2,403 special advance ballots were eligible to be counted, compared with about 500 in the 2000 election. Leman, legislators and elections officials now are proposing changes to help the Division of Elections better manage absentee ballots. Leman wants to move the deadline for requests for absentee ballots to 10 days before an election. State law now sets the deadline at a week before. Sen. Gene Therriault, R-North Pole, has filed a bill to require voter requests for absentee ballots to go straight to the Division of Elections. Last fall, the Democratic Party collected requests using its own form. That delayed more than 1,000 requests because elections officials had to contact voters to verify information, Glaiser said.   pat_vesely Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: pat_vesely Post Number: 527 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 9:41 am:        Welcome to Black Box Voting cedar! Thanks for posting this but it was already posted on the 18th and also please edit your post to about 4-5 paragraphs per the 'fair use' statutes and add a link to the rest of the story. We don't want any trouble over copyright infringement for posting whole works without permission. PAV ;-)

All original content on this website is Copyright (c) 2008-2009 by Black Box Voting. All rights reserved.
Forums powered by Discus Professional - www.discusware.com.
Original site and logo design is by Andy Markley - art101.com.