Last week I wrote a diary entitled "GOP county clerk trying to violate students' right to vote". In the diary I said that Champaign county clerk Mark Shelden had improperly rejected a student's registration for a non consequential error. I was mistaken. The registration was properly rejected. I will explain in more detail below. Yesterday morning I apologized in person to Mr. Sheldon and he graciously accepted my apology. I would have diaried this yesterday, but I had already written a diary. So today I am setting the record straight here. I also wish to apologize to the community here for not maintaining proper standards.
I have been volunteering in a voter registration drive predominantly on the campus. I basically door knock hoping to find students who need to register. Last week I returned to the office to pick up some new forms, and as I walked in the door I was told to be careful in the future about how the forms were filled out in one regard. I needed to make sure anyone registering from out of the county marked the box for new registration, not change of address, even if they had been registered to vote out of county, and that only people currently registered to vote in Champaign County should mark the change of address box, if they had moved within the county.
I inquired, what happened? I was told one of the volunteers, who was in the room at the time, and who had just moved into the county after being registered in another county, had filled out the voter registration form marking the change of address box instead of the new registration box. All his other information was correct. His registration had been rejected, and he had been sent a letter saying he could not register as a change of address since he was not currently registered to vote in Champaign County. Since he was in the room, I confirmed this is what had happened. In fact, at that time, everyone in the room said yes that is what had happened.
Nobody felt there was much we could do about the situation except try to reregister anyone who had been so rejected. There was still time left before the deadline of October 5, to register, and there is also a grace period registration in Illinois. My understanding and position was that someone cannot be denied voting privileges for a non material error and we should do something. I was concerned that a number of students would get such a rejection letter and find it was after the deadline or simply decide not to bother to vote.
The concensus was that it would be counterproductive to fight this and we should move forward and not waste valuable time. I stubbornly tried to insist we should do something to the point of engaging other Democrats I know. Most of these people are far more experienced than I am in politics, and it was everyone's collective wisdom that we would be better served to move on. This little battle should not interfere with the big picture.
So I first decided to retrace my previous efforts and try and find anyone who I had improperly registered. I was very concerned that I should be the cause of someone not voting. There were several students who were very enthusiatic when I had shown up, and I didn't want them to get a rejection notice after the registration period was closed. I knew the major buildings I had hit and I think I did a pretty good job of retracing my steps. I was able to find a handful of students who had filled in the change of address box instead of the new registration box. I either reregistered them or gave them a mail in form that they could complete at their leisure.
I then turned in the completed forms I had collected and tried again to press my point that something should be done. But the general feeling was just let it go. So I went home stewed awhile and decided to write my rant. The diary was not particularly well noticed, but there were a number of comments. Some agreed with me, while others thought the clerk was just following procedure and was right to reject the registrations. However none of those commenting knew, nor did I at the time, that I had my facts wrong. As they say, facts can be tricky things.
A couple of days went by with little happening. Then the county clerk actually commented on my diary. He had to sign up and wait the 24 hrs. So no one probably saw his comment. I didn't realize it was there until I started writing another diary and looked at my page and saw the new comments attached to the several day old diary. In his comment he pointed out he would not and should not have knowingly rejected a registration for an inconsequential error. So either it was done unintentionally or I had the story wrong. He also listed several possible causes of a rejected registration of the type I described.
In the meantime I heard another volunteer had their registration rejected because they had filled out the registration as a change of address, but they were not previously registered in Champaign. But that was now somebody elses problem as far as I was concerned. I had done what I could.
October 5 was the last day to register. Once we had all of our registrations collected, they were taken over to the County Clerk's office in the morning. At that time the people who brought the registrations to the clerk's office inquired about the rejected ballots. It was then that they found out that the individuals had not filled out the standard registration which I thought they had, but instead had filled out a form which I was unaware existed until I read the clerk's comment. It is strictly for people already registered and who move within the county. It does not collect enough information to serve as a registration for anyone else. Specifically it does not require an attestation of citzenship. Therefore the registrations had to be rejected.
I found out about this on the evening of the Fifth, when I checked in to see what we might be doing next. On the morning of the Sixth, I went to the clerk's office to apologize personally. Mr. Shelden took me into his office and graciously accepted my apology. He explained some of the safeguards, procedures, and modernizations that were features of his office. I said I would write something about the situation, which I am now doing. And that is where we currently stand. Once again I apologize to all involved.