Shelby County, discovered by Black Box Voting, attracted much attention and has
been referred to the US Dept. of Justice for investigation by US Rep. Steve
Cohen.
Two important new developments:
1) An internal analysis
conducted by the Tennessee Democratic Party and the Democratic National
Committee's voter protection team has found that more than 11,000 voters
statewide, who are still active on the voter file, have had parts of their
voting history disappear.
2) In new investigative research by BLACK BOX
VOTING, examining what actually happens to voters wrongfully classified as
"inactive", it was found that 35 percent of these were actually purged
(cancelled from the voter rolls).
causes an acceleration in the purge process, and can place these voters under
greater burdens to retain voting status. The BBV analysis of what actually
happens to those who are incorrectly accelerated for purge indicates that of
1,638 active, voting voters incorrectly shifted to "inactive" status in 2006,
about 65 percent managed to re-activate themselves by 2009, but 35 percent, even
though they did not qualify for purge, were cancelled by 2009 with the code "no
vote in 2 federal elections."
Records show that this set of 1,638 voters
deemed inactive in 2006 HAD voted in the 2004 general election; also, they had
not moved, died, been convicted of a felony, been duplicates, had incorrect
social security numbers, or changed name or any other information. Thus, these
voters did not qualify for transfer to "Inactive" status in 2006, which led
directly to purge processes in 2007 and 2009.
11,000 MISSING HISTORIES
I'm going to reprint
the important findings of the Tennessee Democratic Party and National Democratic
Party election protection team in full following this article.
In
summary:
"Data analysts came to this conclusion by
comparing two separate, statewide voter file updates provided by the office of
the Coordinator of Elections. The files -] -] released in December 2011 and May
2012 respectively -] -] contain updated voting records for every registered voter
in the state of Tennessee. Excluding purged voters, all of the voting history
included in the December 2011 voter file should be included in the May 2012
voter file. However, a side by side comparison of the voter files found the
following discrepancies between the December and May updates:
- 7,036
voters lost their 2010 Voting History;
- 5,993 voters lost their 2008 Voting
History;
- 1,771 voters lost both their 2010 and 2008 Voting History;
-
43 Voters lost their entire voting history.
..."the data shows the
problem is widespread, affecting 11,258 voters in 69 different counties in just
the last five months."
BBV INVESTIGATION:
INCORRECT "INACTIVE" STATUS TRIGGERS ACTUAL REMOVAL FROM VOTER ROLLS
In 2012, approximately 150,000 Shelby County voters were transferred to
"Inactive" status, despite full knowledge by Shelby County Administrator Richard
Holden that Shelby County's voter lists are inaccurate.
Holden initially
denied the now-confirmed problem of 488 missing histories, claiming on
television that "Bev Harris just wants to sell a book". More disturbing, when
Rep. Steve Cohen discovered 40,000 missing histories in a file provided by
Shelby County Elections, Holden claimed he had checked the file himself and
implied that Randy Wade (a popular Memphis public servant and former candidate
for sheriff, who works for Cohen), had somehow altered the records, which had
been provided to Wade by Holden on a read-only disc.
The truth is, it's
time for Holden's removal. You can't have an elections official who can't be
trusted, and you can't have vital, federally required election records keep
showing up flat wrong. Earlier this year (as shown in Election Commission
minutes), Holden admitted that he knew of approximately 2300 voters not credited
with voting in 2010, but could not identify hundreds of them. But that didn't
stop him from purging 36,000 voters. In his zeal to inactivate and remove,
neither accuracy nor collateral damage seem to matter.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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