THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060366
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A17 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By TONY WHARTON AND MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: 62 lines
The ``motor voter'' law added thousands of people to the voter rolls across the region this year, but some of them discovered Tuesday they still couldn't vote.
``I guess the Department of Motor Vehicles didn't send in the paperwork or whatever,'' said David Altonaga, a Navy aircraft mechanic whose wife, Misty, registered at a Norfolk DMV location in October but learned she couldn't vote Tuesday.
``That means those people are going to have to miss the election,'' Altonaga said.
No numbers were available, but Altonaga's case was apparently not a rare occurrence.
``More of our calls were from people who thought they had registered at DMV, but we had no record of them,'' said Ann Washington, Norfolk's registrar of voters. ``This has been a statewide problem, not one unique to this area.
``A lot of people are calling today to say they never heard from us or, `Where do I go to vote?' '' she said.
Other registrars reported similar calls.
The federal Motor Voter Act passed in 1993, requiring states to allow voter registration by mail or through other government offices.
It took effect in Virginia in March and boosted registration by nearly 300,000 new voters in the first six months.
The new registration process was not always smooth.
``There have been problems with DMV, there is no question,'' Washington said. ``But remember that this motor voter law is an unfunded mandate. It was imposed on DMV personnel without any additional help.''
The DMV did not have the resources to keep pace with voter-registration applications, she said.
``Initially, when motor-voter started, the DMV was registering 11-year-olds, noncitizens . . . anybody coming in for an ID card,'' Washington said.``Voter registration was just one more thing the DMV staff was required to do . . . It was a major problem in every locality.''
Richard Holcomb, Virginia's commissioner of the DMV, sent Washington a letter Monday.
``Our customers have told us that some registrars claim that DMV threw away their application or that DMV lost the customer's application,'' Holcomb wrote. ``I wish to assure you that all signed voter applications from persons over the age of 17 have been sent to the Board of Elections.''
Washington said the confusion probably was inevitable.
``Before the motor-voter law, people had to register in person before a registrar. We had a tremendous paper trail. We don't have that anymore,'' she said. ``It's a shift now in the responsibility, and I think that's what's playing out today.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by HUY NGUYEN, The Virginian-Pilot
Christophe Green, 2, waits under the voting booth as his mother,
Kearnetta Green, completes her ballot at Ocean Lakes Elementary
School in Virginia Beach Tuesday.
Photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II, The Virginian-Pilot
Voters chat with each other while surrounded by candidate signs
outside the fire station in Chuckatuck. Some ``motor-voters'' were
turned away at the polls because of processing errors.
KEYWORDS: ELECTION VIRGINIA VOTER REGISTRATION by CNB