LOD: Harrassing Voters

A Raleigh-based group called Voter Integrity Project is forcing election officials to spend hundreds of hours researching the status of voters the group claims are not alive or not citizens. VIP’s first mass action challenged the registrations of over 500 voters whose names matched people who indicated they were not citizens in their response to a summons to jury duty in Wake County. After extensive research, the state and county election boards have narrowed the list of possible problems to about 8 voters; many of the rest were not citizens at the time they were called to jury service but became naturalized citizens before they registered to vote. VIP is not satisfied; they’re appealing their claims to superior court. But, as reporter Scott Mooneyham indicates, the challenge shows that current registration procedures actually work well. (Meanwhile, a new law that Democracy NC helped pass will stop the Division of Motor Vehicles from including non-citizen legal residents in the lists it sends to clerks of court for potential jury duty, which will improve the integrity of those lists and save everyone time and money.) VIP has also challenged the registration of hundreds of voters it claims match the names of dead people in several counties, including Wake, Alamance, Halifax and Moore. There likely are names that should be removed, especially because of the time lag and other glitches in how election boards are notified about deaths – although nowhere near as many names as VIP claims. The group could play a better role if it took a cooperative approach with officials instead of pursuing a mission to damage the credibility of the election process as a prelude to pushing again for a harsh voter ID law.