Voting poll purge set to start in July mailing

June 23, 2004

By Steve Walsh / Post-Tribune staff writer

CROWN POINT — To brush up its tarnished image, Lake County Election Board voted on a strategy to purge the bloated voter rolls and a way to end embarrassing episodes like votes cast from the U.S. Steel Yard.

Lake County is trying to beat an Aug. 6 deadline to purge the voter rolls in time from the November general election. The board is authorized to send out a note card to all of the estimated 350,000 people on the county’s voter list.

Lake County Voter Registration estimates that at least 50,000 of the names are people who have moved or in some cases have died since the Motor Voter Act made it more difficult for counties to purge their voter lists.

Purging was one of the recommendations made by the election board’s subcommittee on election reform, created after a series of court cases pointed to widespread voter fraud in Lake County.

“This board made a commitment to the voters and the public. ... This isn’t lip service. We’re going to do what we said. This is the first step,” said Jim Wieser, Lake County Election Board attorney.

He later admitted that it would not end the county’s entanglement in voter fraud.

The board has made no decision on what will happen if workers begin finding evidence that voters may have lied about where lived when they cast their ballots in recent elections, Wieser said.

In April, the Post-Tribune found more than 500 voters in East Chicago could not be found living at the addresses they gave within months of voting in the controversial 2003 mayoral primary. The results were uncovered by reporters combing through the results of the county’s mass mailing to all precincts in the city.

The missing voters equaled 5 percent of the total ballots cast in the race for mayor and included several absentee ballots from people who the U.S. Postal Service said did not live at the addresses listed in the county’s election poll books.

So far the county has not investigated.

The county does not have a plan in place if the returned cards it receives from the purge of voters begins to show similar patterns. With limited staff, voter registration could be overwhelmed, Wieser said.

“It is a question of person-power. We’ll have to see about how many responses we get,” Wieser said.

Along with purging the voter rolls, the board also voted to ask county and township assessors to pass along the addresses of any buildings demolished. Assessors were ed because the owners of buildings are typically eager to remove them from the tax rolls, said Bruce Lambka, the Republican attorney on the election board.

In February, the Post-Tribune found voters had cast ballots from buildings that had long since been torn down to build the RailCat’s stadium in downtown Gary.

At least 116 voters were still registered at addresses now under the diamond. Several had voted in the previous year.

Nearly every county in the state complains of bloated voter rolls. Strict federal requirements limit how easily election officials can remove voters from the rolls.

The rules for a mass mailing were clarified in a state law passed by the 2004 General Assembly.

If the voter does not return the card or if the U.S. Postal Service declares it undeliverable, the name goes on a list in the back of the polling book.

If that person does not vote in two federal elections, they are removed from the voting lists, Wieser said.

The mailing will cost an estimated $160,000. The board will approach the County Council with a request, but the office is on target for a July 12 mailing.

The cost of the mailings will make it impossible to send mailings on a regular basis, meaning the county will have do design other safeguards to ensure the voter rolls will remain clean once the purge is complete, Lambka said.