Allegheny County ACORN is taking credit for more than 25,000 new registered voters. Many wonderful groups were in a scramble and registered many new voters. Three cheers for the efforts to all.
See the comments area for more info on a number of different fronts.
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With the help of the ACLU, David Tessitor and others, we now have cleaner access to voter registration records in Allegheny County via the Election Bureau. Incomplete and pending voter registration
applications can be double-checked.
Lot of phone banking, canvassing and investigation is needed yet.
Over the past couple of weeks, many volunteers have been working very hard to verify voters and then assist all eligible applicants get their
information completed and processed in time to Vote on November 2nd.
We need your help with this HUGE effort in order to be even more effective.
This Voter Protection and Voter Verification work is essential to protecting
the rights of all voter registration applicants and voters in Allegheny
County
Please sign up for the training to be held on October 14th (see below) so
that you can help assist us with this process. If you are not able to
attend this session we will schedule another that will fit into your
schedule. Call or email us to make arrangements.
Volunteer Activities (please mark any that apply)
Another important issue is the new PA Election law that was recently passed. These laws could determine the ability to do poll watching, count provisional ballots, etc. Understand these new laws and be prepared to do outreach to the public so that they understand what is at stake.
Voter Verifier and Voter Protection training to be held on Thursday
October 14, 1-3 pm at the Friends Meetinghouse 4836 Ellsworth Ave.
Oakland / Shadyside area.
Voter Verifier, Voter Protection ongoing activities. Now through Election
Day
Phone-banking.
Experienced data entry work, now.
November 2nd --Election day turnout
Rides to the polls-Election Day-November 2nd
Poll-watcher-Election Day-November 2nd
PA VOTERS COALITION MINUTES October 7, 2004
Attendees: Celeste Taylor, Lauren Townsend, Paul Christy, Perry Lange,
Joanne Chasnow, Lora Lavin, Erica Swanson, Barry Kauffman, Bill Gannon, Joan Martin, Sandra Strauss, Terry Roth, Paul O‚Hanlon, Deborah Delgado
Voter Verification Issues
Within last two weeks of September, over 12,000 new voters were added to the voter file in Allegheny County;
Celeste Taylor/ Project Vote/ Western Region/ working in Allegheny County to get incompletes added to the voter file; letter sent by county, copied to Project Vote who then will contact approximately 300 individuals to help them complete their applications; Allegheny Co giving voters until November 1st to provide the necessary info
Concern in other counties as well about whether or not the county can get through their backlog of completed apps to have them counted and on voter file prior to Election Day
Suggestion offered to look at Berks, Delaware, Northhampton, Bucks, Chester, in that order, depending on available resources, for same purpose
SB346
Passed into law on 10-6-04, now official policy for statewide recounts when the difference in votes is less than half of one percent
Concern about wording that says pollwatchers are subject to $15,000 fines if they willfully commit fraud or allow fraudulent voting to occur; this
could possibly keep a lot of people from working at polls on election day;
Representative Thomas might be filing a lawsuit via NAACP.
Big concern that now there is a law that prevents provisional ballots from being counted if they are cast outside the voter‚s home county; DOS had said in prior meetings that the reason for using the county as the defined
district is that the SURE system was not up and running
What language is there in HAVA that is relative to votes being counted
from outside one‚s voting district?
What happens then with statewide votes for candidates such as President and Senator? This bill locks in the jurisdiction as the county.
Barry, Joanne, Perry, Lora, Paul will quickly work on this issue to see if
they can get legal support for filing a federal injunction in less than two weeks
Promoting Hotlines
Barry made suggestion to have Coalition members post voting day hotlines on their individual websites; he will ask people to forward numbers to him and he'll then redistribute.
Question asked by Terry regarding what assistance might be available Election Day for a person who has accessibility issues; Bill Gannon will be available at the DD Council for accessibility issues assistance.
Post Election Report Card
Barry suggested that the Coalition do a report card, along with a press conference, based on DOS‚s actions re: HAVA implementation and other voting issues
Lora suggested we look back through coalition meeting minutes to see what unresolved issues should be notes
The November 4 meeting will begin at 2 PM instead of 1:45 PM.
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