Voter registration mishap shuts out dozens of first-time voters(lib group denies lib voters)

The CT Mirror ^

[matt04]

Byron Bunda, a junior at the University of Connecticut, had been looking forward to casting his first vote for president last Tuesday. But a voter registration snafu in Mansfield involving the Connecticut Public Interest Research Group denied Bunda and 92 other voters, mostly UConn students, the ability to cast their ballots.

Ninety-three voter registration cards that were supposed to be submitted to the Mansfield Registrar of Voters were lost in a filing cabinet and not recovered in time for the election, according to Andrea Epling, Mansfield's Democratic Registrar of Voters.

Bunda, of Larchmont, N.Y., said he filled out a registration card with ConnPIRG in the middle of UConn's Storrs campus on the last day of registration, Oct. 23.

"There was no problem there. I thought everything was fine," Bunda said. "But then I got an email the night before the election telling me that [ConnPIRG] didn't get the forms in, and that I wouldn't be able to vote unless I wanted to do this special ballot just for the president."

Alex Bell of Seattle, said she and her friend, Alli McLellan, registered to vote through ConnPIRG on the same day. But when the two 18-year-old UConn freshmen arrived at the Mansfield Community Center to vote on Election Day, Bell was told her name was not on the list, while McLellan cast her vote without any issues.

[matt04]

How many of these voters are registered to vote in their home towns but registered to vote in CT because they attended school at UConn?

[Dutch Boy]

Just tossing out an idea.

Eliminate voter registration completely. All legal citizens that are not bared from voting are eligible on their 18th birthday. At the polls, anyone that can prove they are a legal citizen 18 years old or older can vote. No proof, no vote. All people voting illegally such as non-citizens, felons, etc, are subject to 10 years in a prison located in China where they would be forced to work to pay off the debt we own them.

[sarasmom]

LOL!

Did he just turn 18 on Oct 23?

[keving]

My experience with the — PRIG was that they are left leaning Socialists who fought for the ability to “tax” students when they attended college to pay for the activities of the Public Research Institute? Group. So in short these college students learned that performance and accountability are not common with Socialist organizations.

[matt04]

I dealt with MassPIRG. Forced to give money to them as part of tuition, they spent all their time running around with petitions on global warming, text book costs and what not.

One Fall semester they announced in advance via posters and email that on some date they would be outside one of the main campus buildings to discus global warming and what students could do. It snowed. They setup inside. I asked why. They said weather. I went outside and got a ball of global warming and ask them to explain. They were not amused.