Does your vote really count?
Posted By J.T. on June 9, 2009
The Wall Street Journal today printed this editorial on ballot integrity involving Missouri:
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires states to maintain their voter lists by removing ineligible voters, such as those who have moved or died. In 2005, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit in Missouri against the secretary of state for not cleaning up voter registration lists. (A similar suit was settled with the Indiana secretary of state, who agreed to clean up the state’s list.) Justice successfully litigated the Missouri lawsuit all the way up to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which remanded it to the district court for further proceedings.
Registration numbers from the November 2008 election show that more than a dozen counties in Missouri have more registered voters than the Census shows they have voting-age residents. Clearly, the state isn’t keeping its lists current. However, in March, one month after Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (a Democrat and the defendant in the lawsuit) announced she was running for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Kit Bond, the Justice Department dismissed the lawsuit without explanation
While it is unfortunate that voting lists aren’t current, there are probably numerous reasons the numbers don’t jive. People have moved around in the last 9 years, people have died, and some people probably vote in multiple districts. Missouri should get a handle on this immediately, as it is embarrassing when 12 counties have more voters than voting-age residents, and Federal law does require the lists remain current.
The WSJ alludes to some form of impropriety on the part of the Justice Department, noting that the lawsuit was dismissed one month after Carnahan announced she was running for the U.S. Senate. Hopefully political affiliation does not play a role in who justice is adminstered to. At this point all we can do is keep an eye on the number of voters vs. residents.
Cass County has 70,475 residents registered to vote. According to the 2000 Census there were 58,855 citizens age 18 or older. Obviously Cass County has had a booming population this past decade, but have almost 12,000 new voters moved in and everyone currently here has stayed? Hopefully. If not, your vote may not count as much as it should.
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