According to Barack Obama's campaign blog, some Democrats reported on election day that they were unable to vote in the Louisiana primary because their party affiliation had been switched, even though they hadn't changed it themselves. This in spite of strong primary turnouts. Interestingly, neither local media nor Hillary Clinton's blog mentioned this, that I can find--this doesn't mean I'm discounting it, though.
I'm already dreading disenfranchisement and voting machine problems in the general election.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Disenfranchisement of Dems in the primaries?
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4 comments:
I suspect it carelessness since this was the first time that party affiliation mattered. I know that hundreds of people claim the same thing, but if you registered since 1979, you really didn't have any reason to differentiate between Democrat and Independent. If you say something along the lines of "I thought I was Democrat, but they said I was Independent" and your neighbor, coworker, whatever says the same thing; you're more likely to file a complaint.
What I'm more concerned about is the misinformation put out by the Secretary of State's Office that Independents would be allowed to vote in the Democratic, but not the Republican, primary. Nobody in the Democratic Party or the media corrected it until the last minute. I almost didn't get my registration changed in time to vote. I'm sure that happened a lot.
mominem and I discussed at his blog. It might not have been the secretary of State that put out the wrong info, but incorrect information was definitely reported. And nobody's admitted it.
Ah, I bet you're right... and that sort of misinformation is unacceptable. I had always assumed it was a closed primary, but I didn't even try to find out because I was registered Dem. Not only should both the party and the SoS have tried to clear it up, but the media should've reported it too. Again, I'm not looking forward to whatever technicalities and problems November brings.
Thanks for the heads-up on mominem's blog!
If the people turned away can show a voter registration card with the party affiliation, then we've got something.
I did hear that there were complaints by Republicans, as well.
I didn't mean to imply anything nefarious was going -- although my comment could read that way. But the Secretary of State's office put out the wrong info. about the Dem. primary and it didn't get corrected in the media until it was almost too late to change registration. I don't blame the press as much as the state government and the state Democratic party for not catching the error, but I was half amused, half ticked off that none of the reports on the complaints mentioned the misinformation that was out there.
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