Come to Florida, Baby

You might have been wondering what happened after yesterday's post asking about people who showed up for primaries, only to find out they were not registered as Democrats. I collected the following four stories. I'm not prepared to call these anything but anomalies, but I'm also prepared to keep nosing around. Meanwhile, Salon has a more comprehensive piece on what could happen.

Continue to email me stories, if you have them.

I kind of redacted these so as not to make any wild charges. Yet.

one

Anyway, I was in [a] field office as a volunteer for Lamont, acting for the campaign as the local attorney handling voter protection issues for the primary.  This problem was the most common phone call I received (not that I received that many).  Basically, the people who called in were insistent they were or had registered as Democrats and the registrars had them as unaffiliated or Republican.  Stamford seemed to be a particular problem.  One  situation was a black woman who was quite perturbed to be told the registrar had a card for her showing she was registered as a Republican; she insisted she had never been a Republican and would never have registered as one.  At the time, I thought maybe the error had been in the records for a long time, but due to the lack of primaries, had never been caught earlier.

CT Bob notes a similar problem (recounted on his blog).

two

I was doing a title search in [suburb of Waterbury] and a couple came in and were convinced that they had been registered as Democrats for as long as they could remember. They were both on record as being Republican. They didn't seem too upset. They just went about switching over to Democrat.

three

I was in [small second district town] from 6-9 supporting Lamont and my recollection is that one of the moderators reported that they had turned away 10 people before 9:00. I can check with one of the moderators if you think that you'd like more precise information.

four

My wife and I went to vote. I was able to, but my wife was turned away. I had been unaffiliated for the past 24 years of residence in Connecticut, but decided to become a dem in the spring so I could vote this past week. My wife had lived the past 10 years in Glastonbury as a registered dem. Upon changing her name (her choice, not mine) when we got married last year, she registered in [small shoreline town]. She believes she put down dem, but her card said unaffiliated. The volunteer at the voting place called the registrar, who verified (whatever that means) my wife's card as unaffiliiated. She can vote in November. It struck us both as odd.

Comments

[Karen]

I think the law needs to be changed, which does not allow for changing affiliation so close to primary voting day. I think the whole process this time around was made completely absurd by the number of people switching from unaffiliated to Democrat and even others from Republican to Democrat! I've been a registered Democrat for nearly 10 years (most of my voting career). And I find it very difficult to support a candidate who wins a primary where I don't feel voters were true members of the party. And even further, find it upsetting that elected officials, of my choosen party, find it so easy to change their support during the course of the day. This being based on these voters, who will be able to change their affiliation as soon as they cast their ballot!

[D for Demsbetta]

I worked the polls on primary day, in Greenwich. We turned away at least 40-50 people in my precinct alone because they were not registered Dems but thought they were.

Several were clueless about the process, thinking party registration commits to party-line voting, or that somehow your votes magically change your party registration. At least one was blatantly a Republican trying to cross-over. He played dumb until the moderator called in and found out he was registered R, at which point he loudly said, "Can I still vote for Lieberman?"

But many people were convinced they had registered correctly, and a couple were incensed to find that they had somehow been listed as U's or even R's.

I should say, though, that everyone who registered in the weeks leading up to the primary not only seemed to be fine, every single one of them voted.

[Peter Englert]

After much personal debate and soul searching I decided to vote in the primary on the way home from work (For Lieberman). I was surprised to find that I was not a registered Dem especially since I've volunteered my time to them in the past few elections.