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“This administration is populated by people who’ve spent their careers bashing government. They’re not just small-government conservatives—they’re Grover Norquist, strangle-it-in-the-bathtub conservatives. It’s a cognitive disconnect for them to be able to do something well in an arena that they have so derided and reviled all these years.”

Senator Hillary Clinton

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Voting problems

Change For America has a roundup of voting problems coming in from all over the nation, including a couple that have alread popped up here. Missing from Adam's list? The swing state of Iowa:
Hundreds of Iowans who registered to vote by mail were notified this week that their applications were rejected - a situation that threatens to disenfranchise voters less than three weeks before Election Day.

State officials say they are resolving the problem, which stems from the portion of Iowa's voter registration form that requires an identification number. The form allows voters to use the last four digits of their Social Security number if they don't have a driver's license or other state identification number.

But Iowa county auditors' access to the Social Security database to verify those numbers has been delayed - causing hundreds of voter registration applications to pile up without being processed. The situation affects the entire state, including about 400 applications in Johnson County and 500 in Polk County.

"I'm trying to make an effort to get this worked out," said Polk County Auditor Michael Mauro. "These voters have done nothing improper. They followed the procedure printed on the application."