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800 Hillsborough Voter Registrations 'Unverified'

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Published: October 10, 2008

TAMPA - Bay area elections supervisors are laying plans to deal with what they fear could be hundreds of people who have problems voting Nov. 4 because of the state's "No Match, No Vote" law.

In Hillsborough County, some 800 newly registered voters are labeled "unverified" because their information doesn't match federal or state records.

Kathy Harris, Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson's chief of staff and legal counsel, said the elections office has staff working overtime to track down those voters by phone and mail, and even in person. She doesn't expect any problems in the upcoming election.

"Our goal now is to communicate with everyone on the unverified list to give them an opportunity to provide the necessary information before Election Day," Harris said.

If registrations aren't verified by then, Hillsborough voters will be given a provisional ballot at their precincts and told to return two days later with the proper verification to certify their vote.

That's because Florida's "No Match, No Vote" law requires people to provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number when they register to vote. State officials must match the information with a federal or state database.

When that information doesn't match the information in the database, the prospective voter is labeled as "unverified."

In most cases, the discrepancies are caused by typographical errors or by voters who forget to include required information when they fill out and mail a registration form.

Tracking down unverified voters is the responsibility of the state's 67 elections supervisors, who have taken varying approaches to the task.

Pinellas County Elections Supervisor Deborah Clark said she plans to let unverified voters resolve problems at the polls on Election Day, instead of requiring them to cast a provisional ballot.

The Legislature created the law in 2005 to prevent fraud in the voting process, but civil rights groups say the new rules disenfranchise voters. They challenged the law in court, but a federal judge upheld it in June and Secretary of State Kurt Browning implemented the law, which only affects voters registering after Sept. 8.

Statewide, of the 228,795 new registrations logged between Sept. 8 and Oct. 3, 32,847 initially had match problems, according to the Florida Department of State's elections division. Of those, 10,422 would-be voters have been notified by mail of the problem.

As of Thursday, Hillsborough County had 681,832 registered voters on record.

Reporter Christian M. Wade can be reached at (813) 259-7679.

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