Record voting predicted in Montana on Nov. 2

[Judi Lynn]

October 25, 2004

Last modified October 25, 2004 - 4:23 pm



Record voting predicted in Montana on Nov. 2
Associated Press

HELENA - Voter registration for the general election dropped sharply from the last presidential election, but Montana's chief elections official predicts a record number of voters will go to the polls Nov. 2.

Registration numbers collected from the 56 counties by the secretary of state's office and The Associated Press show 648,192 voters registered. That is 50,068 fewer than were eligible to vote in 2000, a drop of 7.2 percent.

Elaine Graveley, head of the Elections and Legislative Bureau in the secretary of state's office, said Monday the decline is due largely to a requirement that the names of voters who did not vote in any of the past three general elections be removed from the registration rolls.

That meant voters not casting ballots in the 1998, 2000 and 2002 general elections were no longer registered to vote after the 2002 election, she said.
(snip/...)

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/10/25/build/state/20-record-voting.inc

[Semi_subversive]

1. I was thinking they dropped the sheep

and stump-broke hiefers from the roles. Or is that Wyoming?

[wtmusic]

2. WADR I hope all those red Montanans vote their little hearts out

it ain't gonna matter one bit

[Laelth]

3. That's sad.

More people getting disenfranchised. Someone should have sued the state. Your right to vote is fundamental, and it's protected by the Constitution. No state legislature ought to be able to disenfranchise you on a technicality. Nor should they just purge the rolls for the fun of it. They have to meet a strict scrutiny test in order to take away a fundamental right. They would have to have a compelling state interest and they would have to show that their action (purging the rolls) was the least intrusive means of achieving that compelling state interest. No way that state act could have survived in court.

imho

:mad:

-Laelth

[BamaLefty]

4. Montana

Montana voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Mmmm?

[struggle4progress]

6. I think lots of states maintain voter rolls this way. Some mechanism ...

... is needed to purge people who have moved or died.

[Laelth]

8. I wonder if that practice has been challenged in court.

I might need to do some research into that question. Sounds like an impermissible exercise of state power to me. I wonder what the state would claim its "compelling interest" was. I agree with you, though. Most, if not all, states do this. The fact that they do it, however, doesn't make the practice constitutional.

-Laelth

[struggle4progress]

9. You don't think states can ever remove people from voter rolls?

[Laelth]

11. Well, of course ...

people can be removed from voter rolls. I wonder if the way it's been done has ever been challenged in court. Obviously, when someone dies, their names should be removed from the rolls. If someone hadn't voted in 12 years or so, I can see their names being removed from the rolls. I merely wonder if the "mass purges" we're seeing are constitutional, and, like I said, I'm curious to know whether this issue has ever come before the court.

If anyone knows anything about this, I'm happy to be enlightened.

:dem:

-Laelth

[struggle4progress]

12. Perhaps I simply misunderstood you. I thought you were commenting ...

... on the statement "the decline is due largely to a requirement that the names of voters who did not vote in any of the past three general elections be removed from the registration rolls" and claiming that this was unconstitutional.

[Laelth]

13. 3 elections, 6 elections, what's the limit?

No, I don't think you misunderstood me. :toast:

I think it might be unconstitutional to remove people who haven't voted in the past 3 general elections (6 years, I assume). I still wonder what the state would argue its compelling interest was that allowed it to do so. I suggested that it's starting to look more constitutional and more reasonable if the state waits and removes people after 12 years (just an arbitrary number I threw out there). It's certainly unconstitutional to remove people from the voting rolls for no reason, but I can see how the efficiency of the system is protected by removing people from the rolls. Mainly, though, I'm just wondering about the constitutionality of this practice and wondering if a court has ever ruled on it.

just curious ... and a little paranoid, this year, about the prospect of anyone being disenfranchised.

:dem:

-Laelth

[struggle4progress]

14. I really can't imagine any legal issue here for a court to address.

The states clearly have some right to establish criteria defining who is registered: the dead will not unregister themselves at death and most people leaving the jurisdiction probably don't bother to inform the BOE either.

As long as the criteria are established by law, as long as people can verify whether they're registered, and as long as people have the option of re-registering once they drop off the rolls, what can the objection be?

If you have any on-point argument to the contrary, of course, I'd be happy to hear it.

[Laelth]

15. Hmm ...

Seems you have some background in the law, so I'll address that comment.

Here's what I envision. Let's say a client comes to me after the Nov. 2 election and says, "Hey, I was disenfranchised, and I want to sue the state. Last time I voted was in 1996, for Clinton (eight years ago), but I had voted in every Montana election before that since 1980. I am a Montana resident, and I've never been convicted of a felony; i.e. I am eligible to vote, and I had been registered to vote. I didn't know I had been un-registered, and as a result, I was disenfranchised."

This client may have a valid constitutional case. As you surely know, the fact that Montana did what was legal does not mean that the state did what was constitutional. In fact, the authority that allowed the state to remove voters from the rolls was probably an administrative ruling of the Secretary of State. Regulations and administrative rulings are law, but that "law" may still be found to be unconstitutional. The right to vote is expressly enumerated in the Constitution. Thus, any law that might take away that right is subject to judicial review. Were I that client's attorney, I would argue that the state's administrative regulation (allowing it to purge the rolls) is unconstitutional in that it infringed upon the right of my client to vote (and I'd probably file it as a class action lawsuit, not knowing how many other citizens had been disenfranchised by this administrative rule/regulation). In order to survive this constitutional challenge, the state would have to show a compelling interest (that necessitated its purging of the voter rolls) and it would have to show that it's purging of the rolls was the least intrusive means of achieving its goal (presuming, of course, that the right to vote is protected by the Supreme Court at strict scrutiny).

That might be a tough case for the state to win, but, as I said, I haven't really researched this issue. I wonder whether such purges have ever been challenged in court. Perhaps they should be.

-Laelth


Edit:Laelth--fixed some BBCode

[struggle4progress]

16. I'm not a lawyer but I think your argument would be a hard sell.

The state has a legitimate interest in preventing voting fraud, and the clear purpose of the automatic drop is to limit fraud by assuring that the rolls aren't unduly swollen by the dead or nonresidents.

The expectation would be, I think, that interested citizens know the law and can act in accordance with it.

How is this worse than (for example) requiring people to have become registered at least six weeks before an election? Before the annual registration deadline, I ALWAYS verify that the board's records still show that I am registered.

As long as the drop process is carefully spelled out by statute, and is applied in an even-handed way, without inappropriate game-playing by the election authorities, why would the courts think this interfered with anyone's right to vote?

[GiovanniC]

5. Whoa.... 13 Montana Residents to Cast Ballots

Up from 8 in 2000.

This could be huge for the Repubs.

[Demeter]

7. They Probably Had to Leave the State

to find work, or fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[neverforget]

10. After 25 yrs, I left the state in 96 to go to school and find work in

Oregon where I'm still at. However, I know of 6 votes for Kerry in Billings. Montana used to have a real progressive movement but then the Pukes took over in the early 90's and it's been downhill since then.

[goforit]

17. Hey didn't the Montana newspaper come out for KERRY???