AS HOMES ARE LOST, FEARS THAT VOTES WILL BE, TOO

This article comes from the New York Times and points out a nasty Catch 22. Imagine if you will that you lost your home to foreclosure and you wanted to vote, but you never received your voter pamphlet in the mail, because, well your mailbox and your house has been taken over by the bank. You have no address you evaporate into the land of the disappeared, the missing, the disenfranchised who have no say... I'll let them tell it:

"More than a million people have lost their homes through foreclosure in the last two years, and many of them are still registered to vote at the address of the home they lost. Now election officials and voting rights groups are struggling to prevent thousands of them from losing their vote when they go to the polls in November.

"Many of these voters will be disqualified at the polls because, in the tumult of their foreclosure, they neglected to tell their election board of their new address. Some could be forced to vote with a provisional ballot or challenged by partisan poll watchers, a particular concern among Democrats who fear that poor voters will be singled out. That could add confusion and stretch out lines that are already expected to be long because of unprecedented turnout.

"Federal election officials say they are concerned that voters are not being properly informed of how to update their addresses.

“Our biggest concern is that many of these voters will stay home or that poll workers will give misinformation,” said Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees voting."

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The link to this story was contributed by DA