Officials to remove 70,000 names from voter list

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Staff Writer

Honolulu City Clerk Genny Wong said the purging is planned for February.

Wong said she estimates that at least half, and probably quite a bit more than half, of the 125,086 fail-safe voters will be removed from the list.

Elections officials across the country are limited in their ability to weed voter rolls under a federal law aimed at making voting easier and more equitable. Critics say the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 artificially depressed voter turnout figures, suggesting a level of voter apathy that does not really exist.

In the presidential general election of 2000, Hawai'i had the lowest voter turnout in the nation. This year's primary had similarly low turnout numbers, with just 41 percent of registered voters showing up at the polls.

Some fear that the artificially low numbers may themselves further depress turnout.

"They always take the percentages from the list of registered voters," said pollster and Democratic political consultant Don Clegg. "I think it makes (some voters) feel that the other guys aren't voting, so why should I?"

In fact, he said, a voter might reasonably study the figures and decide they are a better reason to vote.

"If they were thinking thoroughly, it might tell them that their vote counts more" than if there were higher turnouts, Clegg said.

Elections officials worry about actual low voter turnout, but they say they, too, are wary of percentages based on the inflated registration lists.

The state has 676,242 registered voters going into the general election, but that number includes 125,086 former voters who have moved or do not respond to elections mailings — nearly 20 percent of all registered voters. They are in a class called fail-safe voters.

Just 551,156 voters statewide are considered active voters. As an example of how this changes statistics, the 41 percent of registered voters who showed up at the polls in the primary election represent 50 percent of active voters.

In the 1980s, if voters missed two elections in a row — either a primary and general in one year, or a general election and the primary two years later — county clerks would remove them from the voter lists. Prospective voters would have to re-register in order to vote in an election after being purged from the list.

But the Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as the motor-voter act, set new standards. Members of Congress concluded that tossing people off the list too readily deprived some of them of their right to vote. The act makes elections officials jump through a few more hoops before removing voters.

The law required that each voter be sent a nonforwardable voter information card each election year. If the card was delivered, suggesting the voter still lived and got mail at that location, he or she remained an active voter. But if the card was returned, elections officials would send another card, this one by forwardable mail. If it reached the voter and he or she responded and updated their voting data, they remained an active voter. If the card was not returned by the voter, the federal law required they be placed in a new category, the fail-safe voter.

"It's not failing to vote (that kicks a voter onto the fail-safe list), it's failing to respond to the National Voter Registration Act mailing," Wong said.

Voters stay on voting lists for at least two general election cycles after being placed on the fail-safe list. If a fail-safe voter shows up to vote, his or her current address is checked, and he or she is directed to the proper precinct and is allowed to vote. By updating the current address, the voter is placed back on the active voter list.

Wong said that any voter who has moved and has been out of touch should try to vote at one of the walk-in absentee voter stations by Nov. 2. They are at county buildings around the state, and at Honolulu Hale, Pearlridge Satellite City Hall, the second floor at Windward mall and at Koko Marina. Call the county clerk on your island for times and other locations.

At the walk-in sites, voters should be able to update their registration without the congestion of Election Day, and all the precinct ballots will be available right there. Thus, if you have moved from Wai'anae to Windward O'ahu you won't have to drive across half the island to get to your polling place, as you might on Election Day.

The vast majority of fail-safe voters don't show up at the polls. Kaua'i County election administrator Lyndon Yoshioka said that perhaps 100 of Kaua'i's roughly 6,000 fail-safe voters showed up to vote in this year's primary election.

Communications executive Kitty Lagareta, a Republican Party volunteer who trains poll watchers statewide, said the statewide purging is important for cleaning up voting numbers statewide.

"I think that we're going to get a much clearer picture of what percentage of the people are voting," she said.

Both Republican Lagareta and Democrat Clegg said they have concerns that the identities of fail-safe voters could be assumed — so that people could vote under other people's names. Both cautioned that they were making no allegations, but felt that it was theoretically possible.

"You're asked for your ID, but if you say you don't have it, you simply have to recite the Social Security number. It leaves a lot of room for voter fraud," Lagareta said.

With the huge fail-safe voter list, "you have this big base of people who are not there," Clegg said. "I'm more concerned with the ballot stuffing problem of easy voting rather than of people not being registered. My feeling is that voting is a privilege, and I feel if you don't vote, you should have to register again. I don't see anything wrong with that."

Strict voter registration requirements help preserve the integrity of the voting process, and a realistic voter registration list makes it easier to judge changes in voting trends and political tides, he said.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.