SO I CHECKED MY NY VOTER REGISTRATION STATUS

[markpkessinger]

I checked mine online yesterday, not anticipating a problem, but just to be on the safe side. Lo and behold, I was listed as "inactive." According to the NYC Board of Elections website, inactive status can occur when either (1) a person fails to vote in two consecutive federal elections; or (2) mail is sent to a voter and is returned as undeliverable. Neither of those two should have applied to me (although my mail delivery has been a bit funky on occasion). Anyway, I called the Board of Elections, and was told I will still be able to vote, but I have to go to their office downtown to do so. The good news is I can do so during business hours anytime between now and Tuesday, and they are open on Saturday and Sunday as well.

But New York voters, BE WARNED! Check your registration status so you don't get a nasty surprise on Tuesday!

[hrmjustin]

1. That is freaking criminal!

[malokvale77]

5. It's been a hard day on the planet.

[billhicks76]

36. Military Contractors For Hillary 2016

They are a great group...please donate millions to them.

[hrmjustin]

38. What are you talking about?

[billhicks76]

41. You Haven't Heard Of Them???

Military Contractor For Hillary 2016 is an exceptional group. They donate lots of cash and are willing to help in any way to get their favorite candidate elected and back in the White House. It's really good for all those arms deals to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Qattar to preserve and protect democracy in the Middle East from nefarious forces.

[BeanMusical]

65. Is it also good for coups and death squads in Central America?

[bvf]

73. Love the graphic.

Wonder if she has a Halliburton tattoo?

[PatrynXX]

95. wouldn't surprise me :(

although in this case the original OP would hurt her more than help.

[warrprayer]

101. rec your post n/t

[Betty Karlson]

89. No, it's the rules, as interpreted by Debbie.

And Debbie is doing a swell job of ruining the party. 2014 was just her warming-up.

[highprincipleswork]

2. Shenanigans continue!

[Ferd Berfel]

18. "Shenanigans" is too cute and benign

These are crimes against democracy, the State and the American People

[leveymg]

27. The term dates to Boss Tweed. Accurate Enough. This is an Old School approach to voter fraud.

[nxylas]

70. I think Tammany Hall is a pretty good term...

...to describe the gestalt entity of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

[awoke_in_2003]

63. Agreed

Ratfucking is a more apt word

[Jopin Klobe]

25. Yeah ... James A. Baker the Turd ...

... calls it "mischief" ...

".. the Bush team “dug in like a pit bull,” issuing frequent press statements that hew to the same line: Bush won the vote on the morning of November 8 (see 2:15 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000) and therefore is the legitimate president. Any attempts to alter that “fact” amount to “mischief.” Privately, Baker worries that the narrative is untenable, telling his team: “We’re getting killed on ‘count all the votes.’ Who the hell could be against that?” ...
[link:http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=james_baker|

[MADem]

50. Who are they defrauding though? Are they just targeting Democrats?

Or are they targeting Republicans too?

[bvf]

71. If the answer to that question

is more important to you than the evidence that it's happening at all, you could do with a little moral introspection. It doesn't reflect well on you.

[djean111]

3. I wonder how much fucking with the registrations cost, per state. n/t

[blm]

4. GOP has been using that 'mail sent, undeliverable' trick for at least a decade.

Mr blm and I check our registrations every year. I think we first heard about the GOP tactic back in 2003.

[merrily]

8. Please. This is the Democratic Party, not the GOP. The GOP does not care who votes in a primary.

[blm]

9. This transfers to the general, merrily. Sorry you were unaware of this tactic.

How long have you been engaged in these 'process' matters? I expected more DUers who've been here for more than one election cycle to know these things. Ooops…sorry, I guess you only started after the second primary cycle here. Still…..you should be fully aware of GOP's tactics by now, imo.

[merrily]

12. I'm sorry you feel you always have to have someone's back and you always have to go personal.

Very unfortunate on both counts.

[blm]

43. Yeah, I have ACCURACY's back. Sorry that offends you so much you'd even pretend GOP

is innocent of using these tactics we've discussed openly here at DU for over a decade…and, imo, you'd go so far to pretend here in your reply that GOP is NOT responsible for sending out these postcards to Dem voters, primarily because you are not the type who can admit you could be wrong. About anything.

merrily…you may run things in the Sanders group you kicked me out of for my consistent loyalty to accuracy over the preferred blind hatred of Sanders opponent, but, you can let go of your implications that I am troll here on the other forums. No one with strong memory skills of my time here at DU would agree with you. I spent over a decade here as an aggressive Clinton critic, and stepped on a lot of toes along the way because I wouldn't back down from it. The difference between you and I right now as Sanders voters is that I am a GOTV activist in the real world with priorities for the general election, and I won't reach for just anything to criticize Clinton like you will. When I did back then I always used real matters of concern, and would never rely on RW propaganda and/or daily doses of imagined outrages based in words and phrases taken out of context.

[Silver_Witch]

64. Seriously - you are pouting about being

booted from the Bernie site. I posted ONE post in the HRC group about her support for abortion limits and got the BOOT! One stinking post.

Go pout somewhere else.

[merrily]

69. Not only pouting, but imagining. I had nothing to do with that block.

[blm]

75. LOL - HRC group booted me last year. Sanders group booted me last week for EXACT same

Last edited Fri Apr 15, 2016, 09:32 AM - Edit history (1)

thing HRC group booted me…I had the temerity to try and curb an exaggeration being furthered. Some of us DARE to not lie when we support Sanders, and those who do prefer to wallow in the lies resent when they are shown to have posted something incorrect and unhelpful.

My consistency can be annoying, I'll grant you that.

[MrMickeysMom]

121. Ditto...

All it took was one post.

[merrily]

67. You are mistaken. I am not a host of the Bernie Group and I have never alerted on you.

Someone else who observed your posts to me and others alerted on you without saying a thing to me beforehand. I got a pm from that poster, who also is not a host of the group, AFTER you were blocked, telling me what had happened. When you were blocked, you would have received an email saying who blocked you from the group. It's amazing that you accuse me when I had nothing to do with it. Factual indeed!

[blm]

78. I know who blocked me, but, your constant, wrongheaded accusations

about me there added to the block. You're quick with the accusation, as you do in this thread, implying I was only blaming GOP voter suppression tactics in order to protect HRC campaign who YOU prefer to blame. Sorry, but, that was one helluva reach, ya showed there, merrily.

Accepting responsibility for your own words….not very quick then, are you?

[merrily]

88. You are mistaken again. AS MY PRIOR POST STATED you were alerted on because you had been observed

arguing with someone else before me, then with me. It's your own argumentativeness with more than one member of the Bernie Group, plus the ad hom nature of your argumentativeness that got you blocked, nothing I did. I never alerted on you or mentioned you to anyone else. Nothing. It was all based on your own behavior in the group.

It's you who are not accepting responsibility for your own words, not I.

As far as whether what you refer to as my accusations are wrong, to this day, I have seen zero evidence that they are. Zero. Your accusations that I run the Bernie Group and got you blocked when I am not even a host are beyond baseless.

[blm]

90. Hopeless. Enjoy your intransigence without me caring about your carelessness.

Enjoy your silly warrior stance.

[merrily]

91. Unintentional irony.

[hedda_foil]

57. Ladies please! It's time to back away from the keyboard, close your eyes and focus on breathing.

[blm]

79. heheh…...

you're still a treasure.

; )

[MrMickeysMom]

122. ... and you have some serious issues...

How long have you had to get the last word until someone agrees with you to merit the "treasure" bag.

The reality here is that an awful lot of tactics in the name of democracy keep people from being treated fairly, whether it's NY or AZ, and soon to be seen after, my state of PA.

The issue is election fraud and the right to be informed on choices in the voting booth.

[blm]

123. You're wrong. I clearly stated caging is being done. merrily wants it to be seen as Dems

doing it to Sanders voters only which is completely absurd, and I am noting that it is a GOP tactic that has been used for many years.

Apparently some of you have convinced yourselves that only YOUR particular brand of Sanders support is valid and valuable while my support that is rooted in reality of how elections are run on the ground in my state must be trolling because it doesn't pander to the need many of you have here to be seen as persecuted victims of the Democratic party. As a Dem GOTV activist, I see what some of you are doing as toxic to GOTV efforts in November because you are going so overboard in tarring Democrats as a party, even blaming them for caging tricks done by GOP.

[MrMickeysMom]

125. Sorry, blm.... but you've mis-labeled some of us here...

Why do you think you have special powers to see inside people?

Did you know that a lot of people (including me) are working hard to GOTV? Some of us have points of view that do not exactly line up with the leaders of the Democratic party. Yet, we are broad enough (liberal enough) to stretch in what we may not agree with, not to the point of seeing what everyone's need is, but to demand that the Democratic party return to core values.

So, if we criticize the leaders of the Democratic party, there may be real reason as to why. That shouldn't shake your reality. It IS reality seen from another inside of the party. You can't be everyone.

[blm]

126. If you've seen evidence of Democrats caging other Democrats share it. Because THAT

is what this was about and why merrily replied to my post as if my blaming GOP for caging that they have done for many years to Democratic voters means, in her mind, that I was blaming GOP for what she is certain Democrats are doing to only Sanders voters in NY. If anyone is doing mis-labeling it has been those Sanders supporters attacking any Sanders supporter who doesn't conform to their anti-Dem viewpoint.

You don't even need to have extraordinary insight when some here keep trying to paint you as a fake supporter BECAUSE you actually believe in the merits of GOTV activism to the point where you show dismay that some are following a scorched earth game plan that only makes GOTV harder for those charged with carrying out the effort.

And added thanks to some of the longtime DUers in the Sanders group who knew my Loooooong record of HRC criticism and stayed silent during those exchanges where I was treated like a trolling fake Sanders supporter.

It's always the vitriol that seems to get rewarded with support these days.

[MrMickeysMom]

127. I am not in an officiating county position to see caging...

However, if you think people inside the Democratic party would NEVER stoop to require increased proof of identity, and eligibility to limit the number of voters, then I'd say you're a bit naive. This has been practiced since 1865 and was the reason Martin Luther King stood up to TPTB.

If you're so naive to think that David Brock, who himself was a key player in the campaign to bring down Bill Clinton would N e v e R stoop to any of the filthy tricks to disenfranchise the right kind of Democratic voters, there's nothing I can do about that.

[blm]

128. Sending mail to voters and using lack of response to purge them from voter rolls

is GOP all the way and the topic of the exchange.

If you have evidence of this caging being done TO democrats BY democrats, then show it. According to merrily this is being done to Sanders voters by Clinton campaign, and is not being done to Democrats by GOP.

Show me.

[Amimnoch]

72. True enough, but if the OP was registered Democrat,

and Registered Democrats are voting by a heavy majority for Clinton, why would the Clinton machine be working towards disenfranchising those voters?

Generally accepted talking point now is that open primaries tend to favor Senator Sanders, and closed ones tend to favor Hillary. The circular logic doesn't make sense that the Clinton campaign would be trying to disenfranchise registered Democrat voters?

[All in it together]

86. It is possible that they know who is supporting Hillary

And are kicking off non-supporters.
Whoever is doing this should be stopped. It's been a right wing tactic and procedure for a long time, starting with reconstruction.

[Amimnoch]

87. On that we agree.

Voter disenfranchisement is an abomination to the core principles of this Republic imo.

[blm]

93. That's highly unlikely (like 99.9%) and why do it in a state where they expect to win.

The costs in the general would be far too high.

Dems don't cage.

[markpkessinger]

47. Clarification . . .

. . . According to the NYC Board of Elections, one is declared "inactive" if mail is returned _by the Post Office_ to the Board of Electrions, and is marked "undeliverable."

[blm]

48. Seriously, mark, they've pulled that stunt for over a decade on Dem voters.

We highlighted that vote suppression tactic here at DU many years ago.

[MADem]

51. So if the post office screws up, you are screwed? nt

[procon]

6. That's just damned undemocratic.

Once you register to vote it should remain in force until the voter sends in an official change or a legal death certificate is recorded.

There is NO LAW for mandatory voting. People don't vote for many different reasons, but that should not disenfranchise them for everafter.

[blm]

11. Exactly!! GOP has found a way around all that.

.

[LiberalFighter]

20. I would add one other way where it should change.

When a person updates their drivers license with a new address.

It should also be canceled when a voter cancels their drivers license in the process of getting a drivers license in a different state.

[unc70]

45. Driver's license change shouldn't auto update voter registration

Having that as an option when drivers license is updated -- that is a good thing IF it is implemented properly. Unfortunately, that is a big IF. For example, in Florida apparently their system updated the addresses but also reset party affiliation to none, a big problem in a closed primary state.

In NC at least, there is no requirement that the address on your drivers license match your voter registration. There are lots of cases where that is the normal and appropriate situation. Drivers licenses are required to be updated to reflect short-term (>30 day) changes in residence.

[LiberalFighter]

46. That is the key.... implemented properly.

If they can't program it properly to pop up a confirmation window or alert then the IT people should be fired.

[unc70]

49. Or would that have been the desired result

Coincidences seem to favor certain groups, over and again.

[mercuryblues]

7. A friend of

mine that lives in MA. had this happen for several years in a row. So check again at election time. Yup, going to vote, stand in line, only to find out you were booted out of the system for being "inactive" fun times

[merrily]

10. Untrue. People on the inactive list only have to show ID. You need to send this to your friend:

You have the right to vote but must show identification if: you are a first-time voter who registered to vote by mail and did not submit identification with the voter registration form; or your name is on the inactive voter list; or your vote is being challenged; or if requested by a poll worker. Acceptable forms of identification are: Massachusetts driver’s license, other printed documentation containing your name and address such as a recent utility bill, rent receipt on landlord’s letterhead, lease, or a copy of a voter registration acknowledgment or receipt.

http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/ele12/ballot_questions_12/ma_voter_rights.htm

I always take a utilities bill and ID with me, just in case. I've never been asked for anything but my name and address, though; and my word has always been taken. I've never been on the inactive list and, when I was younger, I did not vote as regularly as I do now. (Boston voter here

I don't know where the misinfo is coming from, but, if this has really happening to your friend--and, sorry, but I doubt it, he or she should call the Secretary of State soon and report this. He or she should also print out the rules from the above link and take the printout, ID and a utilities bill to the polls in November. (Our primary is over, of course.)

[markpkessinger]

15. That may be true in MA . . .

. . . but not here in NYC, at leas according to what I was told by the Board of Elections.

[merrily]

16. ? I was responding to a post about voting in Massachusetts, not to your OP.

[markpkessinger]

17. I get that -- was just pointing out the difference n/t

[merrily]

29. Thanks, but I am aware of the difference.

[markpkessinger]

31. Wasn't pointing it out so much for your sake, as for the sake of anyone who might be reading . . .

. . . please don't take it personally.

[merrily]

33. No worries.

[RockaFowler]

52. Not true in Florida

If you are inactive they take you off the voting rolls!!

My Father-in-Law had it happen to him. He hadn't voted for 20 years. So when he went to vote, they told him that he was no longer on the voter roll.

[merrily]

53. Every state is different. His or her friend is in Massachusetts, so MA is what is relevant.

BTW, there is no reason you cannot work within your state to try to get the law changed.

[tymorial]

21. I'm in Massachusetts and this happened to me on super tuesday

I was told that I was inactive. It has never happened before but several of my friends had it happen to them here in waltham

[merrily]

34. Please see Reply # 10

[retrowire]

13. here we go again... nt

[Helen Borg]

14. Just tell them you plan to vote for Hillary.

You'll be fine then

[LiberalArkie]

19. Might not be a bad idea to pick up a Hillary button to wear.

[Helen Borg]

23. Yep!

[JimDandy]

32. You have to remove buttons and other candidate swag before entering your polling place.

But I get the sentiment here.

[840high]

37. I can't - my

body would have an allergic reaction.

[LiberalArkie]

42. Stick your Bernie button in your pocket and it will cancel it out. Truth always wins out.

Plus once they let you vote, then you can change your button right then.

[Amimnoch]

74. very much begging the question.

Hillary does better in closed primary states than open ones. There's more than enough primaries that have been held to support that.

It does not benefit Hillary to disenfranchise the voters that are and have been registered Democrats.


Your statement is both argumentum ex silentio and based on Argumentum ad populum.

[eomer]

76. Yes, they do benefit Hillary. They benefit candidates on the right.

These type of hurdles are used because they tend to burden people on the left. Students and young people move more often. Working people and poor people are less likely to be able to flex their hours and less likely to be able to drive across town.

These tactics benefit candidates on the right. They are natural tactics for Hillary's team to adopt as the rightwing candidate of the Democratic primary race.

[Amimnoch]

77. whatever.

[blm]

82. Caging ONLY BENEFITS the GOP in the general election.

Those new to the process are making the mistake of not understanding that this is a standard GOP tactic that they use against many unsuspecting Dems. They are using the tactic in more and more states.

And I also disagree with you that working people and poor people are all in Sanders camp. I am middle class in Sanders camp and most of my fellow Bernie supporters were working class and middle class. Many of my fellow Dems here in NC who live their lives with much lower incomes were/are loyal Clinton voters. Funny thing about the Dems on the ground here….we all got along and get along just fine out of mutual respect for each other's choices and our mutual desire to defeat Republicans in the election.

[eomer]

83. Caging can be designed in such a way as to benefit any candidate.

Caging designed to benefit Hillary would probably target young voters and students. Targeting those who vote less often would also likely benefit Hillary.

Manipulating voting times and places can be designed to impact working and poor people in those areas where they would tend to vote for your opponent.

So, no, there's no reason these tactics cannot be used by a candidacy like Hillary. They would just have to know how they work and how to use them.

[blm]

84. That would be akin to cutting off one's nose to spite their face. Who plans to win the primary

by crippling themselves for the general?

As shortsighted as I have seen some in HRC campaign act, there is no one there THAT stupid and THAT shortsighted that they would deliberately suppress so many Democratic votes that they need for general.

I think you're reaching awfully far to convince yourself. This is one of GOP's dirty tricks that NO Dem campaign would emulate. Not one.

[eomer]

92. No, it would be easy to design it to work for the primary without hurting in the general.

Do caging for the primary in states that are either safe wins or sure losses in the general.

Do polling place access tricks that only apply to the primary (like the reduced voting locations in Arizona just for the primary).

[blm]

99. Why in a state where you fully expect to win the primary, then?

I think you don't want to grasp that it would be EXTREMELY unlikely for anyone to do this in a primary race they expected to win, anyway, and you're also diverting blame from WHERE IT BELONGS - on the GOP aiming to reduce Dem votes all over the country.

[eomer]

110. Because what matters is how many delegates you get, not whether you win the state.

Every state in the Democratic primary is proportional - you get more or less delegates based on more or less votes.

Every state in the general election is winner-take-all. How many votes you win or lose by doesn't matter.

So you want to get more votes to get more delegates in every state in the primary. But you don't care how many votes you get in a state in the general unless it changes whether you win or lose that state.

Edit to add: and, besides, it's possible someone would want to cheat the election to make sure that any one of the rightwing corporatists, including Hillary, wins. Someone who only wants to make sure the one candidate who's for ordinary people doesn't win. There are a number of plausible explanations. Your simplistic talking point that it could only ever be a GOP thing is just not necessarily the case.

[blm]

115. I think you're reaching for something that isn't there. There's proof GOP does this,

while you are trying to pretend that the caging GOP does as a matter of course is being done by Democrats, too, though there is no proof.

It's only your HOPE it be true, to me, and utter nonsense.

[eomer]

116. Not my hope, it is just how it feels to me. Or maybe more how it smells.

The Clintons have allied themselves with the shadiest characters I can imagine and have done all the other things that shady politicians do. They are greedy and apparently have no scruples. Why wouldn't they do this?

[LiberalFighter]

22. When you go vote you should also have them show you your voting history.

They should be able to show you all of the elections you have voted.

Depending on whether NY has more than one inactive statuses maybe they should had allowed you to vote at your voting location if they still had your political affiliation correct.

The mail undeliverable can be tricky at times as their might be problems with the Post Office with it. The mailings that election boards usually do involve postcards. And in most cases they are done when your precinct or other election districts change.

When contacting the election board it is important to ask the right questions. Regarding party affiliation being changed... when was it changed, was it via the BMV or paper form?

[Divernan]

56. In Penn we have no capacity at the polling place to pull up such a history.

In Pennsylvania, if the voters' register at your respective polling place has "identification required" next to your name, it will also indicate why, such as "inactive status". If your name is not included in the register at all, you can vote a provisional ballot - but those are a farce since they are not verified/counted until several days after the election.

[LiberalFighter]

58. That information would not generally be at the polling location.

The person I responded to indicated they were going to the election board to early vote. He should be able to have it pulled up there.

[Divernan]

59. Gotcha. PA doesn't even provide that option.

We have one of the most convoluted, archaic, massively inconvenient set of voting regulations in the country. And our state Democratic organization isn't worth spit at GOTV. That's why we have that jerk Toomey as Senator even though Dems outnumber GOP registered voters by just over a million.

As a judge of elections, I pick up what is called my "suitcase" of polling place materials from a county distribution center the weekend before each election and spend 2 days making sure I have all the myriad of forms required; matching up the individual (unopened) absentee ballots with the list of absentee voters; reviewing over 800 line items in my ward/district voting register & highlighting in yellow every voter with "ID required" or other special instructions next to his/her name (to make sure my poll workers don't miss any of those); and just refreshing my recollection of all the complex instructions/forms for every possible problem which could come up on election day. The Monday before the election I swing by my polling place to make sure the voting machines have been delivered and match up the ID/numbered tags on the machines with the numbers provide in my materials; remind building management to have the doors unlocked by 6 a.m. when the pollworkers arrive; and rearrange the furniture in the polling place. Although it is not required of me as judge of elections, I also hold voter registration workshops at my assigned polling place several times a year - lots of retirement homes/condos/assisted living facilities - so a significant amount of new to my polling place voters every election - most of whom assume because they'd voted at their old, in-state address for decades that they'd be somehow magically registered at their new address.

On election days I leave home at 5:45 a.m. and get back home around 10 p.m. Really makes for a brutal day, and most of our poll workers are retirement age. It's ridiculous that we don't have at least a week long voting period and mail in ballots.

[LiberalFighter]

112. Our county in Indiana went with electronic poll books (I-Pads)

They were used for the first time in the Municipal General election last year. The feedback apparently was it went well. The checking in of voters goes faster. They use their drivers license or state id to scan to bring up the voter's record. Then just confirm and sign like you do with a credit card at a store. They have wireless connection. They can now let a voter know where their voting location is at if they went to the wrong one.

In our state the setup is an Inspector from the party that received the highest votes for SoS in the county. There is always a Judge and Clerk from each party. Additional workers are added if turnout is expected to be higher. Prior to last year's municipal general there would be Assistant Clerks in some voting locations but with the electronic poll books that is out as there are only two I-Pads at each location. They do still provide Assistant Judges at some locations.

In our county, the Inspector and the Democratic Judge pickup the supplies the night before the election and do setup.

Since the election last year they expanded the early voting beyond the Election Board's site to four satellite voting locations in the city. A voter can go to any location to vote as they are all connected to the same location.

The party doesn't need to have poll book watchers to track who has or has not voted. The Election Board sends the data to both parties every 3 hours

[dlwickham]

105. The polling places are not hooked up to any central office

at least in my state

If you want that information you need to contact whatever offices in charge but don't blame the poll workers because your name is not on the list

[33taw]

24. I had this issue in 2004. Since then I always confirm my status 4 - 6 weeks in advance.

[blm]

44. That's around the time we first heard of GOP's tactic of sending postcards to Dem addresses

and if they had one returned they were able to strike them from the voter rolls.

[Kalidurga]

26. It's a good thing you checked. Maybe have all your friends check too.

I have a feeling this is more common than most people think.

[Kip Humphrey]

28. The most likely cause of voter affiliation switching is the integration of new electronic voter

registration software with GEM$ vote software plus the Microsoft app (made specifically for Hillary for 2016) that also integrates with the voter registration software. I believe this app is owned by the DNC and it has been shared with the Sanders campaign.

The Microsoft app both tracks the vote count and also allows for voter registration. It has the capability to both query the electronic voter registration and GEM$ vote compilation software, and also to enter data into the electronic voter registration software.

ES&S PowerProfile® is a voter registration and election management application that enables election officials to register voters and conduct elections from a central data store. This system allows for both single jurisdictions and states to manage elections from the same interface. Election officials are able to register voters, check eligibility, conduct election activities such as prepare absentee and early voting, recruit election workers, create poll books and rosters, verify petitions, and maintain voter records using a single software solution.

CHECK YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION IMMEDIATELY!!!

[questionseverything]

96. electronics in voting is the danger

caging used to take quite a bit of man power now a couple operators could use the van software to identify bernie supporters and with a few clicks reduce that number by whatever percentage they felt necessary

the information and technology needed to do this is all in place

wether this is what has been happening or not we do not know but what we do know from history....if something bad is possible eventually if there is nothing in place to prevent it...it will happen

same is true of electronically manipulating results

[aggiesal]

30. Is the NYC Board of Elections run by Republicans? ...

Who you voting for?
Because if it's Bernie that you should fight it.
But if it's Hillary, then you maybe ... just kidding.

Anyway, the reason I ask is that your (2) is classic caging, and it's illegal.

The republicans do it all the time. In my neck of the woods we call it
the Registrar of Voters (ROV).

They get away with it here because the ROV will send out a postcard
requesting you vote by mail, with a yes or no reply (So you're suppose
to send it back regardless). But what they are really trying to determine
if the voter is still at the address listed on the registration.
Their reasoning is that they want to thin out the voter rolls by determining
if the voter still lives at the address on the registration form.

Unfortunately, they never account for lost mail, vacationing residents,
military assignments, college students living at a remote campus ...
There are a whole list of reasons why anyone can not reply to this simple
postcard request for verification, but the outcome is the same, they are
removed from the voter rolls.

The ROV in San Diego, doesn't delete the name off the list. They will place
you on inactive. When we go to the polls, there are basically 3 lists and
each have a different color. At the beginning of the sign-in binder there are
beige colored paper, people listed on this list can only get a provisional ballot.
The white colored paper are voters in good standing and will get a real ballot.
The red colored paper are voters who have become inactive. When you arrive,
you will get a real ballot and when you sign, next election, you will appear in
the white colored (good standing) pages.
If you don't vote twice while your name appears in the inactive, you will move
automatically to the beige color pages, and you can only get a provisional ballot
when you arrive to vote, and your ballot may not be counted.

Eventually, you will be completely removed from the voter rolls, if you stop voting.

That's how I've seen it work in the past.

Keep us informed.

Good Luck.

[markpkessinger]

40. What you are describing is slightly different . . .

. . . What you are describing is "mail not returned." But here in NY, "mail returned as undeliverable" is something the post office does.

[billhicks76]

35. Here We Go Again

Maybe its the Military Contractors For Hillary 2016 group.

[yallerdawg]

39. We get voting notifications before EVERY kind of election...

from the county Board of Registrars.

Identifies all the numbers for district, school, county, state, Fed, etc. and where and when to vote.

Then, when we go to vote, there we are on the list!

You all don't get that?

[Divernan]

61. Not in Pennsylvania.

[seafan]

54. Voter "caging": mail sent to a voter is returned as undeliverable: Voter stricken from rolls.

Yes, this little tactic has been around for a good while.

Tim Griffin's 2004 involvement in caging Jacksonville, FL minority voters now under investigation, June 20, 2007

Tim Griffin was rewarded in 2006 with a US Attorney position in the Bush Administration.

And because the Bush Administration was never held accountable, Tim Griffin's toxic influence on our political discourse didn't end there.


Everyone needs to check on their voter registration for any unauthorized changes.

[blm]

85. You should turn this into an OP and post as a public service announcement in GD-P.

It would also help curb the rumor that Dems are doing it to each other, which is extremely absurd, imo, but being floated around here nonetheless.

[Enthusiast]

55. It's another dirty trick. I'm curious about the bullshit that went on in Ohio and Illinois.

[blm]

81. Caging has become a standard vote suppression action against Dem voters. It's done in advance

to effect the general result.

Dems don't do it against each other. If they did they would be taking the chance of hurting themselves in the primary and crippling themselves in the general.

This is a GOP operation. Many of the newly engaged voters are just now beginning to realize that these tactics exist, but, it seems they are unaware of its history as a GOP tactic and are wrongly assuming it is their current primary opposition.

[CoffeeCat]

60. I really don't like this

I don't like to be cynical, but I don't like that so many Sanders supporters have discovered these problems. I haven't heard one Hillary supporter having problems.

I'm afraid that somehow these voters have been targeted and that their votes may not end up counting.

No doubt, if this has happened to many DUers--that there are many, many other Bernie supporters out there who will find themselves in the same boat. What happens to those people? Will it cause long lines? Will those people be able to vote?

Ugh! Never has any primary been fraught with so many problems, state after state after state!

[leftcoastmountains]

62. thanks for posting your experience!

[BainsBane]

68. I was caged in Texas

That's what they call it when the Sec of State's office sends you a letter to see if you still live at a given location and then remove your registration if you don't. That meant I didn't get to vote for Ann Richards in 1994, the year George W Bush was elected governor.

I also never received an absentee ballot I requested while living out of the country in another presidential election.

It sucks. Registration should be mobile, at least for state-wide and federal offices.

[blm]

80. I didn't realize it started that early. Had to be an early Rove tactic.

They ramped it up before the 2000 cycle and really went widespread during the 2003-4 cycle which is when it finally reached the level of attention of the rest of the country feeling its effect.

[BainsBane]

98. I expect it's been going on far longer than that

Texas' voter laws were designed to exclude Mexican-Americans, who often worked as migrant workers. I'm not sure about now, but for much of the 20th century, voters had to register 6 months before the election.

[L. Coyote]

94. No doubt, this will be front page on the NYT to help everyone.

Not you specifically, but the issue of checking ahead about voting status, is of such consequence to democracy that our "liberal media" will run headlines for days to make sure everyone is treated fairly and that not one person's rights are infringed in the slightest ...... yata, yata, yata.

[nyabingi]

97. The exact same thing happened to me in NC

I hadn't voted since 2012 (as far as I can remember) so I ended up having to wait about an extra 25 minutes out of line before I got to join everyone else for the primary election.

Luckily NC still allows independents to vote in the Democratic primary, unlike NY.

[saidsimplesimon]

100. markpk, in the great state of NY

with a majority of Democrats holding office, you're telling me voter suppression is alive and well? Is it time for a political revolution?

If you support Senator Sanders, now is the time to help make sure we GOTV. Bernie needs a big win in NY.

[stopbush]

102. Er...your point?

You wrote:

According to the NYC Board of Elections website, inactive status can occur when either (1) a person fails to vote in two consecutive federal elections; or (2) mail is sent to a voter and is returned as undeliverable. Neither of those two should have applied to me (although my mail delivery has been a bit funky on occasion).

How does neither of these apply to you when you admit that your mail delivery has been funky on occasion? Seems to me that's EXACTLY what happened to get your registration listed as "inactive."

I assume that any mail being returned as undeliverable is noted to the NY BoE by the USPS, and that would include mail that may have been effected by "my mail delivery (being) a bit funky on occasion?"

There's no nefarious plot here. No intent to defraud or disenfranchise. Most likely, someone sent you something that got returned to the USPS as being undeliverable, so they followed the standard procedure that they'd follow for anyone else. They notified the Board of Elections. The BoE didn't delete your registration, they didn't switch your party affiliation or anything else. And, they had a ready, standard solution in place for you and anyone else who might find themselves in the same situation.

The only difference here is that you cherish your vote enough that you did the right thing from a civic viewpoint and checked on your registration in time that you could do something about it were there a problem, rather than waiting 'til it was too late to act. Good for you. If others were as civic minded, they too would take personal responsibility for their voting franchise and do what was necessary to insure the same.

BTW - every week, I get my neighbor's mail in my mailbox (they sit next to each other at the curb in front of our homes). I usually look through my mail and put their mail in their box. But if I was less nice, I could just toss the mail in the garbage. The mistake comes from the postman delivering the mail, who screws up. It's not some huge plot against my neighbors to keep them from their mail. Believe me.

[sulphurdunn]

109. Good Lord.

There's very likely a nefarious plot here. Why should anyone who voted in the last election worry about the goddamn mail or constantly check their voter status be ensure they haven't been scrubbed from the rolls for no better reason than not receiving a letter? Why in the hell do voter rolls need to be scrubbed anyway except to disenfranchise eligible voters? If it's done before major elections it's just a form of Caging. No viable evidence exists to even remotely suggest that anyone shows up at the polls to vote in place of someone who has moved or who is dead. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that status quo political parties Cage voter rolls.

[stopbush]

111. How is checking your voter status every four years "constantly" checking your status?

Yes, if we lived in a world of unicorns, people wouldn't make honest mistakes. Rules would be magically waived by mere thought.

But we don't live in such a world. We live in a world run by human beings whose simple mistakes often have much greater consequence than any nefarious plot ever could. So we realize this, and as adults, we trust ourselves above other humans to whom we are nothing but a number, and insure that we will be heard as part of our civic duty.

So we check our voter registration. We make sure our driver's license is in our wallet and our wallet is in our possession before we leave home, not because our license gets checked every day, but because it might get checked THAT day. And if it happens that the one day we forget our wallet and we get pulled over by the cops, our getting cited for not having our license was not the result of some nefarious mini-cam the cops place in our home so they could put out the APB for us once they realized we left our wallet on the kitchen counter. It was because shit happens, and it always seems to happen the ONE time you make that small mistake.

[sulphurdunn]

113. I believe your position

is that if I show up to vote only to discover I've been disenfranchised it's my fault for not being more vigilant about checking my voting status. Your other argument is that being unjustly scrubbed is a rare occurrence.

In the first case, if I register and vote regularly, I should not have to worry about being scrubbed. It should simply not be possible. Furthermore, tens of thousands of voters are cleansed from the rolls annually who should not be. Such purges are becoming more common, not less. They amount to what may be inferred to be deliberate voter suppression. When you multiply the error exponentially, and combine it with other hurdles placed in the way of voting, it is no longer a small mistake.

[stopbush]

114. You wrote: "There's very likely a nefarious plot here."

I'm sorry, that's just not credible.

And, yes - if you show up the day of the vote and only then find that you were disenfranchised, it is your fault to an extent, for the simple fact that you could have done something about it ahead of time. You have the power. Exercise it!

Voting is a privilege, a sacred privilege, in fact. Yes - you shouldn't have to worry about your name being scrubbed from a voter file, just like you shouldn't have to worry about some bozo running a stop sign at 80mph in a school zone. Guess what? It happens, through no fault of your own. You shouldn't have to worry about leaving your best dress out on the line when the weather man told you there was no chance of rain in the foreseeable future...and then it pours. Human beings make mistakes.

Fortunately, we can mitigate against those mistakes, because we know from our everyday experience that people fuck up, often to our disadvantage. But we can push back against the stupidities by not being stupid ourselves and just assuming that everything will be OK because, well, why wouldn't it just be OK?

[sulphurdunn]

117. Voting is not a privilige.

It is a right for legally registered voters. It is absolutely essential to the functioning of a representative democracy. Disenfranchisement is not a mistake. It is a strategy. It is not the fault of the disenfranchised. Your analogies between voting and driving are illogical. Driving is a privilege. If you break a rule while driving, you broke it, not the authority that writes you a ticket. Finding out you have been unjustly denied the right to vote because of malice or negligence is the fault of authority, not yours.

[stopbush]

118. Of course it's a privilege, because it can be taken away.

Rights cannot be taken away. Privileges can be taken away.

http://www.voicesofliberty.com/article/how-to-tell-the-difference-between-a-right-and-a-privilege/

[sulphurdunn]

119. Hardly.

Many rights have caveats permitting their denial or loss. Ask anyone in jail, or a former felon in a state that denies them the right to vote, or any non-citizen. Regarding the 'right to vote' itself, I would respectfully direct you the 15th, 17th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Please note the absence of the word 'privilege'.

[Madmiddle]

103. Since the eighties

The United States has not lived as a Democracy. This Republic is an oligarchy.

[markpkessinger]

104. An INFURIATING update!

The NYC Board of Elections is an incompetent mess. So, the other day I checked my voter registration status online, only to find I was listed as being "inactive." I called the Board of Elections, and was told that I should go to their office downtown, and would be permitted to vote there by absentee ballot, and that this would make my status active again. So today, I went down there to do just that, and was told that no, I would have to vote by affidavit at the polling place on Tuesday. When I tried to protest that I had been told to come to the office to vote, I was rudely cut-off as the clerk yelled, "Next!" By the time I had ridden the subway back home -- it's a half-hour trip each way -- I was fuming, so I again called the BoE office to find out why I was being given conflicting information. This time, after I presented the entire story, the person on the phone told me I would have to RE-REGISTER. WTF???? At that point, I demanded to speak to a supervisor. She was nice and accommodating, but could provide no satisfactory answer as to why I had been given THREE DIFFERENT stories as to what I needed to do to vote. So she asked me to come back tomorrow -- and to ask for her -- a Ms. Walker. But this entire episode has been infuriating!

[sulphurdunn]

107. It sounds like you've

been caged. Voter caging refers to challenging the registration status of voters and calling into question the legality of allowing them to vote. Sometimes it involves sending direct mail to the addressees of registered voters, and compiling a list of addressees from which the mail is returned undelivered. This list is then used to purge or challenge voters’ registrations on the grounds that the voters do not legally reside at the registered addresses.

[StevieM]

108. I am not clear as to what exactly constitutes "two consecutive federal elections."

Does that include mid-term elections?

In other words, if a person didn't vote in Obama vs. Romney in 2012, and then skipped the 2014 midterms, are they considered inactive?

Or does it mean that if a person last voted in Kerry vs. Bush, but skipped Obama vs. McCain and Obama vs. Romney, then at that point they are considered ineligible.

And what if they voted in the Democratic or Republican primaries during one of those years, but not the general election? And what if they did vote in a midterm election, but not the presidential election?

I wonder if what this means is that people who last voted in the 2006 midterms or earlier are considered inactive. Of course, that is also unacceptable.

[brooklynite]

120. A Federal Election is an election in which Federal office candidates are running...

...e.g. even year elections (every two years)

[StevieM]

124. Thanks for explaining that. I think it is crazy that someone who last voted in 2010

but missed the 2012 Obama vs. Romney election, and then skipped the 2014 midterms, is purged from the voter rolls, if that is indeed the case.