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Oct 8, 2008

Social Security And Voter Registration Story Gets More Complicated

I had earlier commented that Michael Astrue's letter to state election officials about possible excessive use of Social Security's databases to confirm new voter registrations seemed to be a possible sign of voter suppression. It appears that voter suppression is going on, probably unintentional, but those letters were not part of it, but an indirect result of it. A New York Times article shows that the letters from Social Security were brought about by inquiries to Social Security from the New York Times, concerning state efforts to purge voting rolls. The Times article is confusing, but it is clear that we should all hope that this election is not close because there have been some dramatic and probably illegal purges of voting rolls. There may be some would-be voters getting a nasty surprise on election day.

5 comments:

  1. Congress should just pass a law that photo ID has to be provided to vote in a Federal election and that would solve all this.

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  2. No it wouldn't. That's the reason why SSNs are being checked, because college students and elderly people have no reason to get state-issued photo IDs and many people don't have any photo-ID at all. There are bunch of nuns in Missouri who were disenfranchised in the 2006 election by the state law requiring photo ID.

    SSA leadership started looking more closely at the transactions on the HAVV system after states complained about the shutdown. Only then, after realizing that too many people are being checked, did anyone of influence (i.e., not just the systems folks) say anything about it. That's when the NY Times started sniffing around.

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  3. "because college students and elderly people have no reason to get state-issued photo IDs and many people don't have any photo-ID at all."

    Well if you wanted to vote that would be reason enough to get one. I'm sure every state issues an ID card My daughter is 13 and she has an ID card from MVA.

    If you are too lazy to go get a state ID card I don't want you voting.

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  4. You're not much of a constitutionalist, are you?

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  5. "You're not much of a constitutionalist, are you?:"

    Tired of stupid people electing stupid people. Time for a revolution.

    ReplyDelete