Group helping Nevadans sue for right to vote

Kirsten Searer and Dan Kulin

Monday, Oct. 18, 2004 | 11:06 a.m.

A nonpartisan voters rights group is offering to help people file lawsuits if they think they were unfairly left off the voter registration rolls.

In the meantime, the Clark County elections department is allowing people left off the rolls to cast a provisional ballot -- meaning they would vote only in federal races.

But Clark County Registrar Larry Lomax said he is unsure if those ballots will ultimately be counted. It's almost impossible to prove that those people tried to register to vote but were left off the rolls, he said.

An unknown number of people who registered at shopping malls, outside of government centers or even at their front porches with third-party groups have been left off voter rolls.

At least one employee of a voter registration company said he saw Republicans deliberately destroying forms turned in by Democrats. But most of the people left off the rolls probably had forms that were lost or turned in late, said Andres Ramirez, state director of Voices for Working Families.

Ramirez's group has been registering voters in Nevada for months and will represent people who say they were unfairly disenfranchised, regardless of their party, Ramirez said.

The group hopes to file lawsuits on behalf of three people today, Ramirez said.

All three apparently did not register to vote at the Election Department or at other government agencies. Instead they registered outside shopping centers, bus stops or a Department of Motor Vehicles center. Two have receipts showing they tried to register, Ramirez said.

In one case, 44-year-old Dwight Brandon said he registered with his father, mother and a friend outside of the Meadows mall less than a month ago.

The people who registered them said they were with a Republican group but said they would register people from any party, Brandon said.

"The girl said she was Republican but she could still sign me up if I was a Democrat," Brandon said. "We joked around and talked."

His father, mother and friend registered as Democrats and are now on voter rolls, Brandon said. He registered as a Democrat and is not listed as a voter.

"I've been voting all my life since I was able to vote," said Brandon, who said he recently moved from Toledo, Ohio, and owns a catering company.

He said he called to check on his registration after hearing about problems with voter fraud on the news.

Brian Scroggins, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, said the party has a policy against voter fraud and has registered Democrats and non-partisans along with Republicans.

"We have never discouraged anybody from voting and have certainly not thrown away any forms," he said.

People who have the receipt from their registration form have "a start" in trying to prove they tried to register, but it might not be enough, Lomax said. The Election Department has no way to verify where or when the receipt was filled, he said.

Receipts from forms submitted to a government office would have a date stamp on them, which would qualify as proof of when the registration happened, and would serve as proof in cases where a government worker failed to adequately process a registration, he said.

"If we don't have you in our system than you're not registered," he said. "That person failed to follow through and check to see if they were registered."

Lomax said complaints from people who claimed they registered only to find out they were not on the registration rolls have been surfacing for years.

That's why voter registration forms now have disclaimers advising voters to turn in their own forms and not count on others to submit them.

"If you turn your form over to some complete stranger, that stranger may not turn it in," Lomax said.

"This comes up every year, and it's a small number," Lomax said, adding that the county doesn't track complaints about lost forms.

Concerns about voter registration fraud ramped up last week after a former employee of a Republican-funded group, Voters Outreach of America, said he witnessed Democratic registration forms destroyed.

The state Democratic Party sued last week to open up registration to those who said they were wronged, but on Friday, District Court Judge Valerie Adair ruled that opening up the registration process could cause pandemonium, jeopardizing the entire elections process in Clark County.

She also noted that state law gives individuals the right to sue to reinstate their voting rights.

In the past few days, Democrats and Republicans have agreed that problems go even further, largely because thousands of voter registration forms were checked out to independent groups that have been held to few standards.

The county registrar can track the number of forms issued to each group, but the groups aren't always required to say what happens to forms that turn up missing.

Ramirez predicts that many missing forms might not have been deliberately destroyed but could have been lost or turned in too late.

"I think there's going to be tons of folks who come forward," he said.

While Adair said voter registration couldn't be re-opened, Lomax had told voters they could vote with provisional ballots if they were willing to sign a document saying they had tried to register.

But on Saturday, the first day of early voting, provisional ballots were not available, said Democratic Party spokesman Jon Summers.

Lomax said he didn't think anyone would want a provisional ballot on the first day of early voting. Provisional ballots are given to people who either don't have proper identification with them, or who need to prove they are registered to vote despite not being on to rolls.

The ballots, which only contain the federal races, are only counted if that voter returns later with the proper documents.

Lomax said because the provisional ballots don't include state or local races or ballot questions, he assumed most people would rather return to the polls later, with the proper identification or proof of registration, and cast complete ballots.

Lomax said 13 people who were not registered asked to vote on Saturday morning and were turned away. Several people simply hadn't registered, others said they tried to register but were not on rolls, he said.

Another eight were told Saturday afternoon to come back Sunday after election officials decided to put the provisional ballot on the early voting machines, Lomax said.

Eight people cast provisional ballots on Sunday, he said.

Democrats dispatched their attorneys Saturday to complain about the lack of provisional ballots, Summers said.

"The county should have been prepared for this," Summers said. "... I don't quite understand why our machines weren't programmed and ready to go for provisional ballots."

Voices for Working Families is working to validate stories from another 12 voters who say they tried to register but are not on the voter rolls.

Another man registered outside a Department of Motor Vehicles center in Las Vegas, and a woman registered outside of a downtown bus stop, Ramirez said.

Summers said the Democratic Party was in contact this weekend with another couple who said they registered twice this year -- once outside a DMV site and once in front of a grocery store -- yet the two Democrats were not on registration rolls when they attempted to vote on Saturday.

Scroggins said the Republican party heard from a disabled veteran who thought he was registered but could not cast a vote this weekend.

Republicans are quick to point out there are problems with forms turned in by groups with Democratic leanings. They held a press conference Friday pointing out three voter registration forms turned in by Moving America Forward, a group founded by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat.

The forms contained voter addresses that turned out to be nothing but dirt fields, Scroggins said.

And they pointed to a Democratic voters guide that encourages Democrats to complain about potential Republican ploys to disenfranchise voters.

"It's been rumored for a long time that Nevada might be the Florida of the 2004 election," Scroggins said. "I think they might be setting the stage for that to happen if it needs to happen."

Democrats from presidential nominee John Kerry on down have said they won't allow this election to be a "repeat" of the 2000 election in Florida, when they claim many voters, including many minorities, were disenfranchised.

On Friday afternoon, Donna Brazile, chairwoman of the Democrats' Voting Rights Institute, visited Las Vegas and said the party isn't trying to use this issue for political gain.

"No American should be denied the right to vote on the basis of skin color or on the basis of party affiliation," she said.

After the Florida election of 2000, the Democratic Party "vowed never again would we allow our citizens to be turned away from the polls," she said. "We didn't create the situation in Las Vegas. The Republican Party created it."

Voters concerned about their registration can call the county elections department at (702) 455-VOTE or the Democratic Party's voter hotline, 877-WE-VOTE-2.

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