I tried posting this yesterday and it didn't work. I posted it in an open thread, but that rolled over. So here I am taking one last shot at this.
I'm forwarding an email from Rachel Kadish, a visiting writer at Stanford, who sent this to the Creative Writing program.
Hi all. I don't know that many people at Stanford, but I wanted to get this message out to those I do.
As you know, we're visiting for the quarter from Massachusetts.
Bhavana, our daughter's babysitter, is living with us here. She decided to register to vote in California. On the first day of classes at Stanford, she was walking in the main square and saw a table with a sign that said "Register to Vote". She filled out a form. The two guys working the table told her that if she checked that she was a Republican, they'd each get a $30 break off their tuition. She declined, and marked herself as an Independent. She finished the registration process and turned in the form.
More below the break.
Today Bhavana decided to check to make sure she was registered. She wasn't -- her form had been discarded. Luckily she will be able to correct this by making a trip to a San Jose courthouse and having a judge authorize a 'compel to vote' form.
This is disturbing, to say the least. I have no idea how many Independent or Democratic Stanford undergrads registered to vote, only to have their forms discarded. I doubt many will think to do what Bhavana did: call in to check. We are going to try to get some mention of this in the local papers and the Stanford paper.
Meanwhile, I wanted to let all of you know about this, so that you can urge students, in whatever way you think appropriate, to confirm their registration. If they discover that they are not registered, please let them know there is something they can do, if they act on it quickly.
Here is what they have to do:
Call the Registrar of Voters at (408) 299-8683
If the student is not registered, he or she should ask for a "Compel to Vote" form. This can be mailed or faxed.
Then the student needs to take the form to the San Jose Court, at 191 N. 1st Street, San Jose. There a judge will read the form and take action. For help with this process, call the court at (408) 882-2100 x 2412 (Brian) or x 2435 (Katrina)
Thanks, everybody.
Rachel
So there you have it. This smells like a nationwide effort to me, mainly because it's too widespread and the incidents are happening too close together for it to be groups piggybacking on the actions of a few bad apples. I have no other proof that it's coordinated, alas, but that's certainly what it feels like to me.