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Questions persist over forms Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/9845670.htmhttp://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/9845670.htm
Posted on Wed, Oct. 06, 2004
Questions persist over forms
Spot check reveals voters did register
By Bill Cotterell
DEMOCRAT POLITICAL EDITOR
A spot-check of voters who were registered using photocopied forms indicates that they really did sign up to vote, Leon County's elections chief said Tuesday, but doubts continue about their choice of party.
Leon County received about 1,500 photocopied voter registrations, mostly from Florida A&M University and nearby black neighborhoods. The overwhelming majority registered as Republicans, which made Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho suspicious because the FAMU precincts are lopsidedly Democratic.
His staff has contacted 36 voters so far, all of whom said they signed color registration forms, not the black-and-gray photocopies forwarded to Sancho. And only one of the 36 said he intended to sign up with the GOP.
Voters aren't required to designate a party when they register, and members of all parties can vote in the Nov. 2 general election. So for voting purposes, party registration won't matter until the 2006 primaries and people have plenty of time to switch.
But there's still the question of whether the signatures on the forms are originals as the law requires. Sancho revealed Monday that he asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate.
It's possible that an organization running low on registration forms made copies and that the forms were filled out and signed with a black felt-tip pen, which can be difficult to distinguish from a photocopy.
The FDLE will help verify voter-registration documents from counties where elections officials suspect fraud or forgery, a spokesman said, but agents are leaving it to election supervisors to interview voters.
"The Department of Law Enforcement is not trying to engage in a broad-brush policing of elections," said Tom Berlinger, an aide to FDLE Commissioner Guy Tunnell. "What we're trying to do is to assist the Department of State and supervisors of elections if they are having difficulty establishing whether a registration document is valid."
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating accusations that FDLE agents intimidated black voters in Orlando by going to their homes to interview them about alleged voter fraud.
Selvin Cobb, a FAMU alumnus whose Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity was one of the groups registering voters in Tallahassee, said he hadn't heard of anyone turning in photocopies.
"We used only the original forms for all of the folks we registered," he said.
Longtime NAACP leader Anita Davis said her organization conducted a registration drive using only original forms and then sent them to Sancho's office. The forms in question were first turned in to the state Division of Elections.
"For all of them to be Republican and from my side of town, that just doesn't seem right," Davis said.
The FDLE revealed Tuesday that some of the photocopied registrations came from precincts around Tallahassee Community College and at some shopping malls.
"When a box of forms gets dropped off at the Division of Elections, we forward it to the county," said Alia Faraj, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood. "We don't open the box and examine or verify the signatures."
The director of the Division of Elections sent a memo urging all county supervisors to watch out for "the unconscionable attempts by a few to undermine voter confidence."
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