Study Turns Up 45,000 Duplicates on Voter Rolls

By Mike Corbin   WISH-TV  28 October 2004
Produced by Loni Smith McKown

(Marion County) - With Election Day just five days away, there's new controversy about voter registration rolls.

An Indianapolis Star study shows more than 10,000 voters are registered in both Marion and a nearby county.

An I-Team 8 study found within Marion County alone, more than 45,000 potential duplicates are listed on voter rolls. This is because many old addresses weren't purged or their names changed due to marriage or divorce.
 
Even dead people's names remain on the rolls, including late Governor Frank O'Bannon.  

Secretary of State Todd Rokita blames the federal Motor Voter Act of 1993 for the numerous duplications and county officials for not removing the names of the deceased.

Rokita says state voter rolls are d every two years, the last one done this past summer. But he adds it's not primarily a state responsibility. "My point with the clerks is it's a county issue to clean the list,” he said. "This is not new. We've known about this for some time.”

Meantime, county Republicans and Democrats are pointing fingers.

"You have thousands of people out there who can with impunity, go from precinct to precinct and vote under old registrations. It's very worrisome to me,” said Mike Murphy, Marion County Republican chairman.

"They put out false information on the voter ID card when they mailed that out this time threatening to remove people from the voting rolls which they admitted they didn't have the right to do. But it sure intimidated everybody,” said Ed Treacy, chairman of the Marion County Democratic Party.

Treacy says federal voting rights law limits purging to make sure it isn't politically motivated. However, Murphy says it's really about fairness and preventing voter fraud.

Challenges to voter rolls are expected in swing states like Ohio and Florida. That same bitter battle could surface in Indiana as well.

"We have the temptation, enormous temptation for fraud in this county, particularly now that the Democrats know what it's possible to get away with,” said Murphy.

"That's not a problem in Marion County. That's subterfuge by the Republicans to get out there and to challenge voters who are legally capable of voting,” said Treacy.

"No - what we're worried about is a fair election,” said Murphy.

County Democrats plan to circulate 150 lawyers through voting precincts on Election Day, but Republicans won't share what they're doing.

"It was the Democrats who file the suit in federal court to stop the list from being cleaned up. Now you have to ask yourself, why is it the Democrats do not want an accurate list?” said Murphy.

"This is part of their whole program to confuse and intimidate the voters and that's what they're attempting to do,” said Treacy.

Solutions

Next year - a year without any elections - officials will create a centralized, statewide voter registration list. The system will be linked to the BMV and the state health department. This should help officials keep the voter rolls current and accurate.