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Saturday, May 25, 2013
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Web goof dropped new WB voting precinct
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · September 14, 2012
You live inside West Branch and registered to vote years ago? Well, for more than a year, the state said you didn’t.
In June 2011, the Cedar County Board carved out a new voting precinct around the city of West Branch. But the Iowa Secretary of State’s Web site just found out this week.
Resident Jennie Embree notified this newspaper Sunday that the Secretary of State, which oversees elections, has a site that was not showing her or anyone else she knew in West Branch as registered to vote.
The Web site, sos.iowa.gov/elections/voterreg/regtovote/search.aspx, kept replying “There are no matching records with the same name and zip (sic) code.”
Her friends outside West Branch’s city limits, but still inside the ZIP code — residents who live in the country — all showed up.
We did our own search and found the same results.
Cedar County Auditor Cari Gritton said Monday that county auditors all use a linked system to track voters — called iVoter — and she assumed the state’s Web site developed its database by pulling information from there. This reporter’s name was not showing up on the state Web site, but Gritton said it did show up in her voter database.
Gritton said she had been contacted about the glitch earlier Monday morning and already contacted the state about the problem. When she called the Times back Monday afternoon, she said the state reported to her that it simply did not program the Web site to find the new West Branch voter precinct, and that it should be fixed by Tuesday morning. When this reporter tried it again, it worked.
“They pull by precinct, not last name,” Gritton said.
The West Branch precinct affected elections Jan. 15 and beyond.
Had the problem not been noticed, voters appearing at the polls on Nov. 6 for the presidential election may not have noticed either — the database that prepares files for election judges belongs to the county auditor, not the state.
“I’m the one who downloads everything to the precinct atlas,” Gritton said.
Early voting begins Sept. 27.
Residents may register to vote even on election day, at the polls. Gritton said it takes about four minutes to fill out the form and residents will need a driver’s license or utility bill to prove where they live.
While there recently has been some controversy over Voter ID, Gritton said such a measure has not been enacted in Iowa. Voters need only to provide their name to the election judges to obtain a ballot.
GETTING INVOLVED
Voters who do not see their name on the state database may contact the Cedar County Auditor at 563-886-3168.
You may check the state database at: sos.iowa.gov/elections/voterreg/regtovote/search.aspx |
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