Missouri
Voter Protections Newsletter Volume 6 Issue 4
September 2, 2010
Denise Lieberman, Senior Attorney at Advancement Project, has recently traveled around Missouri, meeting with members of the Elections Boards for Kansas City, Jackson County and St. Louis and with coalition partners in mid-Missouri. The meetings covered substantive topics including how to increase voter registration, persons with felony convictions seeking to vote, the status of qualified voter registration applicants stuck on pending/incomplete lists, poll worker training, and voter education. Regarding voter education, Advancement Project and its allies seek to strengthen their collaboration around the state to ensure that voters are educated about how to update their registrations if they’ve moved and to locate their polling place.
On the topic of voter outreach, the Kansas City Elections Board sends a representative to naturalization ceremonies once a month, but it was interested in Ms. Lieberman’s suggestion that it look into pairing up with the League of Women Voters, which attends all naturalization ceremonies in the St. Louis area to register voters. Jackson County Election Board staff weekly visits offices of Division of Family Services, the Library, City Hall and other state offices to promote voter registration, and has provided voter and poll worker information at unemployment offices in an attempt to reach voters hit by the economic crisis. The St. Louis Election Board is making an effort to engage in extra outreach to voters who have moved to inform them of how to update their registrations. Voter outreach efforts are particularly important this year because no organization has stepped in to fill the void left by ACORN; third party voter registration applications are low throughout the state this year.
While new registrations are lower this year than in past federal election cycles, voter advocates are particularly concerned about voter outreach because of the large numbers of new voters in 2008 who may not know they need to update their registrations. Of the approximately 400,000 new voters in Missouri in 2008, nearly half were between the ages of 18-24 and a significant proportion came from the state’s urban areas, demographic groups likely to move frequently. Because voter registration is not portable in Missouri, voters who move must register to vote in the jurisdiction of their new address in order to be eligible to vote this November.
Another key topic, raised both at meetings with local election officials and in ongoing advocacy with the Missouri Secretary of State, is the status of voters whose Social Security number or driver’s license number could not be verified in the Social Security or motor vehicle databases—so-called “HAVA no-match voters.” Because the data on these voters’ applications has not been verified, the state voter lists categorizes these voters as “pending/incomplete” despite the fact that many of these voters are eligible to register and vote and have submitted a complete voter registration application. Lieberman advocated with the election officials that notices sent to such voters not threaten to reject their registrations, but rather explain that they may vote upon clarification of the needed information.
Advancement Project recently submitted public records requests and has received lists of pending/incomplete voter registration applications from Missouri’s major election jurisdictions and is in the process of reviewing them to identify HAVA no-match voters that submitted complete applications. Discussions with local election authorities revealed a range of procedures in dealing with such voters. Some jurisdictions will override the default “incomplete” status and place voters on the active voting rolls if a Social Security number match is made, even if the name differs slightly (i.e., if “Robert” appears on the SSA database, but “Bob” appears on the application). Unfortunately, many still reject or notify voters that they will reject incomplete applications if the voter does not submit missing information within 30 days. Advancement Project’s fight to prevent HAVA no-match voters from being disfranchised continues.
Lieberman has also been providing assistance to coalition partners and community groups seeking information on voting rights, recently assisting disability rights groups working to identify and register voters with disabilities, and giving talks to several community groups about voter eligibility, voter intimidation and absentee voting.
