Ballot SNAFU May trip-up thousands of newly registered Democrats (Oregon)

[swag]

Source: Willamette Week

Many of those who switched from other parties or from non-affiliated status to join the Democrats did so after county elections officials had already sent their voter lists to the printer. So those late-switchers may get a ballot reflecting their original registration and, later, a second ballot reflecting their new status as registered Dems. Only one ballot per person will be counted.

But here's the kicker: because recent changers will get their invalid ballots first, they may send them without realizing their Democratic ballots are on the way.

Kevin Looper, the director of Our Oregon, an advocacy group that studies voting patterns, says elections officials should have been better prepared, given that the wave of newly registered Democrats is a national phenomenon easily observed in states that have already held their primaries.

Looper says the screw-up could hurt Obama, the presidential candidate who many voters are presumably switching to vote for. And it also could penalize candidates farther down the ticket who might otherwise ride on Obama's lengthy coat-tails.


Read more: http://wweek.com/wwire/?p=11778

[annabanana]

1. OREGONIANS TAKE NOTE!

I am hoping that those voters most likely to be affected are the ones who are MORE likely to get at least some of their news online. It's a given that corpomedia won't touch it.

[OregonBlue]

2. Won't most people who switched to vote for Obama be calling the county clerk when they get

a generic, rather than a Dem or Repuke ballot? I certainly would. That wouldn't be true if you were just an ordinary voter but if you made the effort to change your registration so you could vote for a particular candidate and then you got a ballot that didn't have the candidates listed, I would hope you'd be calling to ask why?

[zbdent]

3. "wah ... wah ... Rush! Abort Operation Chaos!!!

I'm being disenfranchised!!! We can't f*ck up the primary!!!"

[MaineDem]

4. I don't think this issue is humorous

This could be a very serious situation. This is not like the other so-called "disenfranchised" states. This is a voter protection issue.

[Indenturedebtor]

5. What?

You don't think that this is a serious issue?

This isn't about just Obama, it's about our right to vote and to have those votes count... as well as being about as the OP said, the people downticket!

[Parche]

6. Hey Swager

It probably came about because of our dear friend, David Reinhard....
:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:






David Reinhard
I . . . just . . . couldn't . . . do . . . it.

The piece of paper sat on my desk, day after day. All I had to do was fill in the form from the Oregon Secretary of State's Web site and send it to the Multnomah County Elections Office. Then I could vote in Oregon's Democratic primary.

I would be relevant. I would matter. I could make history with Hillary Clinton or vote for change Barack Obama can believe in. I would join the disenfranchised Oregon Republicans who were re-registering as "Democrats for a Day" to vote in the May 20 presidential primary.

But there the form stayed. The days turned to weeks after I wrote a March 16 column on the movement, and I . . . just . . . couldn't . . . do . . . it.

Not even for a day.

Oh, I tried. I did things to steel myself to fill out the paperwork. I drank double-soy lattes crafted from fair-trade coffee while listening to National Public Radio and reading the Blue Oregon blog. I sipped white wine deep into the night and tried to chant "Children are our future" without a hint of sarcasm. I slapped a "Goddess bless" bumper sticker on my new hamster-powered Prius before I rode the MAX line from Beaverton to Hillsboro and celebrated all the diversity I encountered along the way. I even started blaming President Bush and Vice President Cheney for the late arrival of spring.

But, alas, nothing worked.

In the end, a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly kept me from becoming a One-day Democrat.

The good: I took to heart the comments of readers who wrote in to say that messing around in the other party's presidential primary -- trying to hijack their nominating process -- was unsporting. Democrats should have the chance to pick the candidate who best represents the Democratic Party's values and principles and/or the best shot at defeating the Republican standard-bearer. It was morally and ethically questionable -- actually, "reprehensible" was the word one reader used -- to vote in the other party's primary to pick the weaker candidate. It smacked of dirty tricks and insufficient seriousness about the office of the presidency. The longer I reflected on this, the more I thought my critics had a point.

The bad: The longer I reflected on the Democratic race, the more it became clear that it's not clear if Clinton or Obama would be the "weaker" candidate.

Clinton's problems have been obvious for all to see from the start -- indeed, from before the start. All those problems received a fresh summing up with Hillary's Bosnia sniper-fire saga and Bill's late-breaking bid to, ah, correct the record.

Obama's weakness in a general election was becoming apparent a month ago, and they've come into sharp relief since. An already-thin resume has proved something of a padded resume. Not only has Clinton not allowed Obama or the public to forget the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, she's put a spotlight on another Obama associate -- William Ayers, an old Weather Underground radical who remains unrepentant about bombing the Pentagon, the Capitol and a State Department building during the Vietnam War. Then there are Obama's San Francisco stylings on small-town Americans. Even Obama's dreamboat rhetoric, it seems, is wearing a bit thin.

In Real Clear Politics' average of polls (www.realclearpolitics.com), John McCain leads Clinton, 47 percent to 44 percent. Against Obama, it's a 45-45 dead heat, and this is before the GOP introduces voters to Obama. Impossible choice.

And the ugly: A lot of these Democrats just plain don't like each other. I thought the Republican presidential primary was rough, but at least it was largely about issues -- and McCain's nomination appears to be uniting the GOP. Just in the last week, however, Clinton called Obama "elitist and divisive" and "out of touch." One (since-departed) Obama aide called Sen. Clinton "a monster," and another adviser accused President Clinton of practicing McCarthyism. Eek.

In recent polls, 19 percent of Obama backers said they would vote for McCain if Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, and 28 percent of Clinton supporters said they would go with McCain if Obama's the party's standard-bearer.

Finally, if I became a "Democrat for a Day" and voted for Obama, some of my fellow Democrats would call me sexist. And if I voted for Clinton, other Democrats would call me racist. All things considered -- hey, I picked up that phrase listening to NPR -- I'd rather remain a "mean-spirited" Republican.

David Reinhard, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8152 or [e-mail].