41% of Nov. 2 provisional ballots axed in Lucas County

[Blue Diadem]

Hope this isn't a dupe. Long article but worth the read. I'd like to know why they waited to purge the rolls until a few months before the election and why it has taken this long to be publicized.


http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050109/NEWS09/501090334

Purging of rolls, confusion anger voters
41% of Nov. 2 provisional ballots axed in Lucas County


snip:
28,000 voters erased
More than 28,000 voters were purged from the Lucas County rolls last summer, a move that county elections director Paula Hicks-Hudson said had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with following federal law.

snip:
Purges are mandated by federal voter registration law, confirmed Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. However, he said, counties have flexibility in deciding whether to purge voters before or after elections. Ms. Hicks-Hudson said she did not recall why Lucas County decided to purge before the election.

Lucas County rejected a higher percentage of provisional ballots - 41.1 percent - than any county in the state and did so in significantly higher percentages than most other metropolitan counties in the state.

Snip:

Wrong lines cancel votes
The records of local provisional voters tell interesting tales. There were 7,591 cast in Lucas County on Nov. 2, more than double the volume in the 2000 presidential election. And, records show, the county had an unusually large percentage of rejections among those provisional ballots.

There were two principal causes of the rejection of local provisional ballots - the purge of nearly 30,000 registered voters and the casting of provisional ballots in the wrong precinct.