Voter Registration

The Rev. Al Sharptonwas in Philadelphia yesterday to encourage voter-registration and to help ensure that alleged voting irregularities in the last two presidential elections are not repeated this year. On Locust Walk on the Penn campus, he handed out voter-registration forms and spoke to about 200 people. "In 2000, they robbed us of votes in Florida; in 2004, they robbed us of votes in Ohio," Sharpton told the outdoor crowd. "I'm on tour to make sure you are registered to vote before Oct. 6 in Pennsylvania.

A statewide petition drive for voter-registration reform, sponsored by Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, was unveiled in Camden yesterday as officials sought to build momentum for legislation that would make voter registration more accessible. Lawrence Hamm, state chairman of the New Jersey Chapter of the National Rainbow Coalition, and various state and city officials said they wanted to keep voter-registration reform in the public eye to build support for state and federal legislation.

Voter-registration hours have been extended in Delaware County so prospective voters can beat tomorrow's deadline to be eligible to cast ballots in the Nov. 3 general election. The Voter Registration Commission office at the County Government Center in Media will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today, said William A. Lovejoy Jr., the county's public relations director. Anyone in line to register at 7 p.m. will not be turned away, Lovejoy said. But those arriving after 7 will not be permitted to register.

They were just slips of paper, but when Christopher A. Lewis shook them in a cardboard box, they produced a sound he called "magical. " They were voter registration forms. And until yesterday, a citizen couldn't find them - or register to vote - at state agencies in Pennsylvania. "Hear that sound?" asked a delighted Lewis, who is secretary of the commonwealth and in charge of elections, as he shook the box at the state's Uptown Job Center at Fairmount Avenue and Broad Street.

The Philadelphia Board of Realtors is hoping to make it easier for home buyers to register to vote at their new city address. Under a plan announced Monday, the board is trying to get all 2,200 Realtors in the city to provide voter-registration forms to buyers at settlement. Last year, a slow one for real estate, there were just under 4,000 real estate transactions in the city. The board is following the lead of the National Association of Realtors, which has been urging local boards to encourage voter registration.

As this year's presidential election campaign enters the homestretch, the League of Women Voters of the Media Area is attempting to enlarge the pool of area voters. Last week, the league began a voter registration drive at the Plum Street Gazebo in downtown Media. On Wednesday, league workers will visit the Delaware County Campus of Pennsylvania State University in Media. And, on Sept. 27, they will visit Delaware County Community College. Katherine Miller, president of the Voters Service for the league's Media chapter, said the league has a good reason for spending so much time at local high schools and colleges.

Area Leagues of Women Voters are gearing up for Election Day 1988 by participating in the nationwide voter registration day on Friday. Pennsylvania residents must meet an Oct. 11 registration deadline to vote in the Nov. 8 presidential election. Those who are 18 or will turn 18 by the day after Election Day may register to vote. In addition, those who have moved, have changed their names or have not voted in two years must re- register to vote. College students who live out of state should register in their hometowns and arrange to vote through absentee ballot.

He's back on the road again, dutifully pleading for support while other erstwhile presidential candidates have long since retreated to the obscurity of life outside the range of TV cameras. But now when former candidate Jesse Jackson clutches a microphone in some Southern gymnasium, his pitch is for voter registration pledges instead of campaign contributions wadded in empty Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets. It is not the massive voter registration drive that Jackson announced in June with enthusiastic press releases and a news conference on the steps of a California church.

Good-government group the Committee of Seventy is concerned about a backlog of voter registration applications in the City Commission's office ahead of the Nov. 6 presidential election. Seventy President Zack Stalberg wrote to city officials that it appears the number of unprocessed registrations may exceed 20,000, "raising the possibility that potential voters will not be registered - or know whether they are registered - in time to vote on Election Day. " "We got calls from a number of voters who were concerned they didn't get their voter registration yet," said Ellen Kaplan, policy director for the Committee of Seventy, adding that it would like to help by either recruiting volunteers to assist commission staff or urging the Commissioners to hire temporary workers that can help tackle the backlog.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court will struggle this week with the validity of an Arizona law that tries to keep illegal immigrants from voting by demanding all state residents show documents proving their U.S. citizenship before registering to vote in national elections. The high court will hear arguments Monday over the legality of Arizona's voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "Motor Voter" voter registration law that doesn't require such documentation.

SELMA, Ala. - The vice president and black leaders commemorating a famous civil-rights march on Sunday said efforts to diminish the impact of African Americans' votes haven't stopped in the years since the 1965 Voting Rights Act added millions to Southern voter rolls. More than 5,000 people followed Vice President Biden and Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.) across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma's annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee. The event commemorates the "Bloody Sunday" beating of voting rights marchers - including a young Lewis - by state troopers as they began a march to Montgomery in March 1965.

The Camden County Board of Elections is searching for bilingual poll workers to help the area's growing number of Latinos cast their ballots in the June primary. But how many are needed is an informed guess, determined by surveying names of registered voters rather than querying them in advance or analyzing census data. In November, Camden County joined six other New Jersey counties required to provide Spanish-language materials at all polls rather than just in selected precincts.

Mayor Nutter appointed a fact-finding group headed by Managing Director Richard Negrin on Friday to review reports of problems during the presidential election. "On Election Day, there were reports questioning the integrity of the voter registration lists, the supply of provisional ballots, and the preparedness of some poll workers to address new state voter laws," Nutter said. He said City Commissioners Anthony Clark, Al Schmidt, and Stephanie Singer, who run city elections, had agreed to cooperate with the fact-finding.

Philadelphia's city commissioners moved a step closer Wednesday to understanding why voters had to cast more than twice as many provisional ballots in the 2012 presidential election as in 2008, but the initial review raised as many questions as it answered. Many of the problems occurred because of mistakes by poll workers and voters themselves, according to a preliminary report by Gregory Irving, the commissioners' acting voter registration administrator. In 2012, 27,355 voters cast provisional ballots, up from 12,733 in 2008.

IF PENNSYLVANIA'S new voter-ID law had been in effect last Tuesday, we can imagine that some people would be still in line today, waiting for their turn to vote. Fortunately, the law was not in effect. Voters did not have to produce a photo ID before they could vote, thanks to a temporary injunction against enforcement of the law issued by Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson on Oct. 2. The key word above is "temporary. " Simpson's order applied only to last week's election.

By Barbara Arnwine From the perspective of the command center at the voting-rights coalition Election Protection, last week's election was the story of a system badly in need of reform - of voters who did everything right but were turned away due to registration problems; of rights being deliberately misconstrued or obstructed; and of hours and hours of waiting. Call after call came in to our hotline - more than 89,000 on Election Day alone - from confused and concerned voters. Voting machines were jamming in Ohio, and ballots were being stored in boxes marked "provisional.

About 40 law students in the Voters' Rights Project at Rutgers-Camden spent Election Day shuttling among polling places in Camden and a law school conference room. All volunteers, they were monitoring the voting process and evaluating whether the polling places met Board of Elections standards. Starting before daybreak, the students by midday had examined every one of the 30 or so city polling places. First-year law students quizzed voters to compile a demographic profile of who voted; second-years checked on the ease of access to the polls.

GOOD-GOVERNMENT group the Committee of Seventy is concerned about a backlog of voter-registration applications in the City Commission's Office ahead of the Nov. 6 presidential election. Seventy's president, Zack Stalberg, wrote to city officials that it appears that the number of unprocessed registrations may exceed 20,000, "raising the possibility that potential voters will not be registered - or know whether they are registered - in time to vote on Election Day. " "We got calls from a number of voters who were concerned they didn't get their voter registration yet," said Ellen Kaplan, policy director for the Committee of Seventy, adding that it would like to help by either recruiting volunteers to assist commission staff or urging the Commissioners to hire temporary workers that can help tackle the backlog.