Motor voter system goes slow in Ramsey County

Associated Press

15 October 2004

ST. PAUL - The "motor voter" system of registering to vote while getting a new driver's license isn't working as planned in Ramsey County, as Kelly McGaughey and her husband, Jason, have discovered.

They registered to vote when they got new driver's licenses, figuring it would be easier than standing in a long line and registering on Election Day. That was in late July. Nearly three months later they still hadn't received their registration cards.

The couple figured there was problem and register through the mail, but other would-be motor voters may not find their names missing from the voter rolls until they get to the polls Nov. 2.

"We waited and waited and waited," Jones said of the card that never arrived.

Ramsey County is the only one of Minnesota's 87 counties that insists on seeing the paperwork the registrant filled out, rather than using information sent electronically by the state Driver and Vehicle Services division.

Joe Mansky, Ramsey County elections manager, said he needs to make sure the forms were filled out correctly and insure clerks didn't make mistakes when they transferred the information from paper forms to electronic records.

"We find errors on approximately 10 percent of the incoming applications," Mansky said, referring to the motor voter registrations.

The policy may increase accuracy, but it also slows things down because it takes a long time for the paperwork to get from the licensing bureaus to the Ramsey County elections office.

The week's batch included applications from August. Ramsey County will be able to get all the applications it now has on hand into the voter registration system before the election, Mansky said, but applications that didn't get to the county before Tuesday's preregistration deadline will not be included on the voter rosters.

Other counties look at the situation differently. Anoka County, for example, goes strictly by the electronic records. Washington County issues voters cards on the basis of electronic records, and later verifies them through the paper forms, as do 27 other counties.

The decision is up to the counties, said Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, but she understands the concerns voiced by voters and election officials such as Mansky.

"I've been hearing complaints about the poor quality of data entry for years," she said, adding that it used to take even longer for the paperwork to get to election offices. "We would like to be perfect, but we are all human beings, and the more times you handle it, the more risk there is."

To make sure the process goes smoothly, she said, citizens can minimize the number of people who handle their registrations by walking into the county or secretary of state's office, or by mailing in the form.

"I think it's an issue, but I don't think it's necessarily a major one," she said.

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