Hopeful voter disappointed over late registration

Molly Ball

Monday, Aug. 30, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.

When Jon Baumunk moved to Las Vegas last month, he immediately went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to register his car and get a new driver's license.

Outside the DMV, a canvasser asked him if he wanted to register to vote. She said he still had time to sign up for both the primary and the general election.

But last week Baumunk discovered he was one of 1,500 people whose registrations were allegedly turned in too late for the primary by the organizations that signed them up to vote.

"She (the canvasser) gave me a receipt that said, 'If you don't receive a card in the mail within 10 days, call this number,' " Baumunk said.

On Aug. 23, Baumunk called, and the Election Department told him his registration was not received until Aug. 13 -- three weeks after he signed the form on July 23, and a week past the Aug. 7 deadline for primary registration.

Earlier this month Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax announced that four non-governmental organizations had turned in a total of 1,500 forms after the deadline. There was no explanation for why the groups, which are not related, were all a week late.

The group that signed up Baumunk, the National Voter Fund, says it is not responsible for the late form, which might have been delayed by an irresponsible canvasser or by Election Department blundering.

Baumunk, a lawyer and Democrat who moved here from San Diego, said he was upset that he would not be allowed to vote. He enjoys being politically involved, he said.

Having just moved to a new place, "I was looking forward to becoming more familiar with the issues as the election approached," he said.

Because turnout for primary elections is typically low -- less than 30 percent -- "I feel my vote counts more in the primary than in the general election," Baumunk said.

Early voting began last week for the Sept. 7 primary. Through Sunday, 40,641 people had voted.

On Thursday, Lomax said Baumunk and others like him were out of luck. "It's cut and dried in state law," Lomax said. "There has to be a cutoff at some point."

The county needs time to prepare for the election, including printing voter rosters, he said. It cannot honor forms dated before the deadline unless they were turned in on time, Lomax said.

"Otherwise you could fill a form in and show up six months later," he said.

Lomax has made it no secret that he views third-party groups that sign up voters as untrustworthy. Most of the organizations are affiliated with national interest groups or parties.

The canvasser who registered Baumunk took down his address and other information, then gave him the clipboard to sign and date, Baumunk said -- so he never noticed the text on the form that urges registrants to return it to the Election Department themselves.

The canvasser also didn't tell him that he could register officially inside the DMV, when he signed up for his new license, he said.

The National Voter Fund is affiliated with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The fund's local organizer, Bobbie Mullins, said Wednesday that she was investigating Baumunk's form.

According to Mullins' files, the form was never submitted to her by the canvasser, meaning the canvasser might have taken it directly to the Election Department.

"It's hard to say when you're dealing with canvassers," she said. "You don't know what they do with the form."

Mullins said she had fired several people for not submitting paperwork properly, but said the canvasser who registered Baumunk was not one of them.

As for Baumunk's claim that he didn't see the writing on the form, Mullins said, "I wouldn't sign something that I haven't read."

She added, "If you're so concerned to vote in the primary, why didn't you go down there (to the Election Department) yourself?"

Baumunk said he has not decided whether to take any legal action, whether against the fund or the county. "I'm currently evaluating my options," he said.

Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that someone whose form was received or processed late would only have grounds to sue "if you could show not just that they were turned in late but that there was gross negligence and it was intentional."

Lomax has battled with interest groups this election season over ballot initiative petitions that contained valid signatures but failed to meet certain technical requirements. In response, state and federal courts recently have struck down the requirements as unconstitutional, including a rule forcing signature-gatherers to themselves sign affidavits and one requiring signatures be gathered from 13 of the state's 17 counties.

"The way the courts have looked at this, by and large, is with the proper assumption that the purpose (of the process) is to enfranchise, not disenfranchise voters," Lichtenstein said.