Some voter registration letters causing concern
Voter registration letters from a non-profit group and unrelated attempts to obtain voters’ personal information are causing confusion and worry among residents in an already heated election season, officials said Friday.
Some people began receiving letters from the government-sounding Voter Participation Center in June with another round hitting mailboxes last month. The Washington, D.C., based group has said it wanted to register more than 1 million people across the country this year and had gotten about halfway to that mark by early September.
In a Sept. 7 press release, the VPC said it was mailing out 11 million additional voter registration forms across 18 states, including Pennsylvania and Ohio.
However, officials like Larry Blosser, the Fayette County elections director, said the VPC is still sending letters to those already registered or voters who have moved or died. The letters include a Pennsylvania voter registration application and the address of county elections offices.
Blosser said he has an inch-thick stack of responses, but none are applicable to unregistered voters. Instead, many responses are from people already registered so there is nothing to update, and others complain about receiving the letters.
“Some of these people just don’t want to be hassled,” Blosser said. “It turns them off from even wanting to vote.”
Beaver County elections bureau director Dorene Mandity said complaints increased after a second wave of VPC letters went out last month. Residents have been calling her office and sending back forms, some with not-so-nice words on them, ever since.
“It’s a mess,” she said.
A Calkins Media employee in Beaver County received a VPC letter in August listing an old address and insisting she was not registered at her current address when, in fact, she is.
The letter referred her to www.pavoterservices.state.pa.us, the state website to check voters’ registration status and also includes instructions on how to remove yourself from the VPC mailing list.
News reports across the country this year have chronicled the confusion VPC’s letters have caused with voters, many of whom assume they are from government election offices.
Wanda Murren, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, said outside groups are free to hold registration drives and anyone confused should go to the state’s voter website or call 877-VOTESPA (868-8772) to check their voter registration status.
Page Gardner, the founder and president of the VPC, said all of her group’s forms “clearly state” they are from the VPC. “We make it simple to check your registration status online, and to be removed from our mailing list if we’ve sent you mail in error,” she said.
Gardner said no state has available lists of unregistered voters so the VPC buys residential databases and compares them to voter lists to try and determine who is eligible to vote but not registered. She added that the VPC “spends significant resources” to make sure that only unregistered, eligible voters receive their mailings.
Founded in 2003, the VPC has helped register 3 million Americans and 200,000 Pennsylvanians, Gardner said. “Currently, 1.9 million voting-eligible African Americans, Latinos, millennials and unmarried women are not registered to vote in Pennsylvania,” Gardner said. “That’s an alarming number and VPC is doing something about it.”
Earlier this week, the Pennsylvania Department of State said it would be mailing 2.2 million postcards to eligible but unregistered voters, including 400,000 in southwest Pennsylvania, reminding them of the state’s Oct. 11 registration deadline.
On Friday, police in Beaver borough, Beaver County, issued a “scam alert” warning that residents are being contacted in-person or by phone or email under the guise of verifying their voter registration status only to have their personal information sought.
Police advised residents to never give out their personal information, such as Social Security numbers, and to take registration forms to complete themselves or register at local election offices.