NJ Attorney General Says New Provisional Ballot will be Ready for Election Day

18 October 2006

The implementation of an innovative New Jersey law, designed to ensure that every provisional voter is registered to vote, will finally be ready for the November election, according to the Attorney General Stuart Rabner's office. While the re-design was required by statute to be in place for the primaries earlier this year, that deadline was missed. The New Jersey Citizens' Coalition on Implementation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) met with a Deputy Attorney General before the summer, and sent Attorney General Stuart Rabner and county elections officials a letter on September 28, pushing for enforcement of a state law requiring provisional ballots to simultaneously serve as voter registration applications in the upcoming November election.

"According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's 2004 Election Day Survey, 45% of those who voted provisionally in New Jersey in 2004 did not have their ballots counted. And the number one reason why provisional ballots aren't counted, nationally, is because people aren't registered," said Renee Steinhagen of New Jersey Appleseed. "If eligible voters are making the commitment to show up at the polls, but are not registered to vote, they should have this simple, easy option available."

New Jersey law requires that election officials design and implement a dual-purpose form, among other related provisions, by the first of January this year.

"As of January 1, these conditions should have applied to all voters who cast provisional ballots in the June primary and should apply to those in the upcoming general election," said Dudley Griffith, member of New Jersey Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

In October 2005, members of the HAVA coalition and a representative from Design for Democracy met with the Attorney General's staff to discuss plans for creating a provisional ballot that doubles as a registration form. After much delay, the Attorney General's office now says they are about to roll out a newly designed provisional ballot-voter registration form.

"New Jersey took great initiative to pass a state law to create a dual-task form," added Steinhagen who also facilitates the NJ HAVA Coalition. "We are pleased to know that these forms will be distributed soon, to make certain that every person who votes provisionally will be registered to vote for future elections."

With the general election approaching, the Coalition asked Rabner last month to either distribute the new forms, if available, or immediately require all counties to attach voter registration forms to all provisional ballots before distributing them to voters.

"We hope that the counties will receive these forms in a timely fashion with sufficient time to train the poll workers to ensure that voters who cast a provisional ballot fill out the entire application correctly. It's too bad that everything had to happen so much at the last minute," stated Jo-Anne Chasnow, Policy Director for the Election Administration Program of Project Vote.

The NJ HAVA Coalition will also push the Attorney General to create a web-based public access portal for voters to verify their registration status and locate their polling place before election day, as required by state law. "Unfortunately, it's too late for this election. But we hope they will respond," added Chasnow.

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Source: usnewswire

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