Opinion: Editorial

Registration frustration

Last week, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen filed a lawsuit against the state’s Government Accountability Board demanding they cross-check the information of residents who have registered to vote since Jan. 1, 2006. This came two weeks after the GAB said it would only verify the information of those registered since Aug 6. 2008 — the date when their voter registration database came online.

This week, Van Hollen upped the ante, filing a motion to expedite the process so the GAB would have to cross-check as many registrants as possible before Election Day, Nov. 4, 2008.

While Democratic and Republican officials politicize this affair, painting nightmare scenarios of widespread voter disenfranchisement and voter fraud, respectively, there should be some level-headed evaluation of the facts rather than giving into either camp’s hysteria.

Van Hollen’s attempt to hold the GAB’s feet to the fire is certainly not without merit. The Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in 2002, gave each state four years to create an adequate computerized statewide voter registration list. Wisconsin did suffer due to the election commission’s merger with the newly created GAB, but that is hardly an excuse for Wisconsin’s two-and-a-half-year compliance delay.

While Democrats have accused Van Hollen of trying to engineer a Wisconsin win for Sen. John McCain by filing the suit, we see no evidence that the timing of the move is politically motivated. Van Hollen brought up his concerns with the GAB after the creation of their computerized database, but received a response from the board on Aug. 28, 2008 stating its refusal to check registration rolls during the period Van Hollen requested. Van Hollen’s suit two weeks later was the next logical step.

In theory, Van Hollen’s suit is simply upholding the law, as is his responsibility. His attempts to expedite the process, however, run into logistical problems.

As the GAB cited in its letter to Van Hollen, an attempt to remove ineligible voters who registered before the establishment of its computerized database would throw 22 percent of those registrations into doubt, mainly due to misspellings and other discrepancies between the GAB database and voter’s licenses and IDs. Come November 4, the GAB estimates 20,000 could be erroneously de-registered if the problems aren’t remedied. This could result in a slowdown in the election process, which could discourage voter turnout.

Trying to cross-check as many names in less than 45 days would likely increase the probability of errors.

We commend J.B. Van Hollen for trying to stamp out voter fraud in a state where it is notoriously easy to cheat democracy, but he has to time his battles appropriately. If Wisconsin is a key swing state, as current polls seem to indicate, 20,000 voters are all it could take to give one presidential candidate the state and, possibly, the White House. After all, John Kerry won the state by about 11,000 votes in 2004; Al Gore won by only 6,000 in 2000.

Van Hollen should pursue his lawsuit against the GAB to ensure those who are not legally allowed to vote cannot do so, but he should try to mitigate his unintended influence on this election. Compliance with HAVA is necessary, but a frantic effort to compensate for the state’s past delays would ultimately work against the purpose of this federal mandate: to prevent another Florida-style snafu.