The article "Campus polls reject voters" (The Daily Targum, Nov. 3) explained the University students' voter registration problems very well. Most likely, many of the provisional ballots won't be counted as votes because the process only allows for those voters already in the county system. These students may have been disenfranchised, despite the amazing voter registration effort by several University student organizations.
Student disenfranchisement is a systematic problem, both in Middlesex County and elsewhere. County and University officials should have been more prepared for the Election Day problems, given the publicity over increased voter registration efforts, student mobility and voter address requirements and previous problems at student polling places. Poll workers incorrectly denied students their rights to a provisional ballot many times, despite the provisions of the 2002 Help America Vote Act and assurances by the state attorney general.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey received numerous calls on Election Day from students turned away without provisional ballots. We contacted the Attorney General's Office and were told all registrations delivered in a "timely manner" were processed. The county did have on hand a "box" of about 150 incorrectly completed student registrations that would be used to vet the provisional ballots. But where were the other 5,000 or so student registrations?
Unfortunately, Superior Court Judge Dennis Nieves' court order merely repeating a right the students already had avoided the greater problem: the missing registrations. Case law had already established the students could have voted immediately if the judge deemed the students had made "good faith efforts" to register in time - as was happening in Essex County, where judges there sent record numbers of denied citizens back to the polls to vote. Copies of the student voter registrations would have provided the proof for the students' good faith efforts in Middlesex.
Five hours after Nieves' order, we got a frantic call from a student organizer about students still being turned away without provisional ballots. This continues to raise many questions about poll workers' expertise and voting procedures from polling place to polling place.
To ensure student voting rights, future voter registration procedures should include same-day registration, online immediate access to voter registration rolls, voting at any polling place in the county of residence, better public education and outreach by state election officials - including well-designed posters explaining pertinent voting regulations in all public locations - and stronger judicial decisions.
Poll worker training must be improved and sanctions must be taken against those who ignore voting procedures.
University and election officials and voter drive organizers must determine what went wrong to ensure this doesn't happen again. For those students whose provisional ballots will be discounted, the Middlesex Board of Elections should match up the copies of student voter registration with the provisional ballots.
Unfortunately, those students turned away have been disenfranchised in an election where every vote counted. And it is their future most affected by present election results.
Anne Barron is the Project Director of ACLU-NJ "Ex-Offender Voting Rights" Project.
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