Originally posted by: CADkindaGUY
Voters find some caucus sites moved; other sites run out of ballots
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"This is worst than in the '60s," said Albert, who also is chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus. "This is horrible. This election needs to be stopped. Because this is not right."
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CkG
Seems they have now put a registration(zipcode, age, sex) in the way so I'll post the whole thing.
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Voters find some caucus sites moved; other sites run out of ballots
By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN
The Associated Press
2/7/2004, 3:36 p.m. ET
LANSING, Mich. (AP) ? Some voters in Saturday's Democratic presidential caucuses found that their caucus sites had been moved or were out of ballots.
Michigan Democratic Party Executive Chairman Mark Brewer said some caucus sites had to be changed because building landlords decided at the last minute that the caucuses were a political event and they didn't want that in their building.
"This always happens," he said. "Some of these changes occurred literally within the last 24 hours. There was no way to get the word out. So we're doing the best we can. If people call us, we tell them where the new sites are."
He denied accusations from the state directors of Howard Dean and John Edwards' campaigns that the problems were disenfranchising presidential caucus voters.
"You're talking about 1 to 2 percent of 600 caucus sites (being moved) around the state," Brewer said. "Nobody's disenfranchised. ... I think this is much ado about nothing on the part of the Dean campaign."
Edwards state director Derek Albert, however, said most of the moved sites were affecting minority voters and were robbing them of their right to vote.
"This is worse than in the '60s," said Albert, who also is chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus. "This is horrible. This election needs to be stopped. Because this is not right."
Lorenzo Morgan said that he and his wife called the Democratic party's toll-free number and were told to vote at one caucus site, only to find it closed. The couple had to drive around to try to find their right caucus site.
"They're afraid even to tell us where to vote," said Morgan, 66, as he came into a caucus site at Bethany Baptist Church in Detroit to vote for candidate Al Sharpton.
Other people coming to the church also said they had been told their caucus sites were somewhere else.
Dean state director Daren Berringer said changing polling places at the last minute was hurting voters, especially in low-income areas such as Detroit where people might not have arranged transportation to get to a caucus site outside their neighborhood.
"They're walking to their polling place and they're finding their caucus site has been changed," Berringer said. "The sites in Detroit and Southfield are in minority areas. This is direct voter disenfranchisement."
State Sen. Buzz Thomas of Detroit, who supports Kerry, said that he, too, was receiving complaints about caucus sites being moved, in some cases without leaving information on where the new caucus site was.
"I've heard from a number of constituents of mine who said they would have voted for Kerry, but they didn't have a place to vote," Thomas said.
Democratic National Committee member Joel Ferguson, a black Kerry supporter from Lansing, agreed there were problems with some of the caucus sites being moved. But he said the Dean and Edwards campaigns were trying to make a bigger deal out of it than it was because their candidates were losing.
"Some of our people got lost. Some of the other people (for other candidates) got lost," Ferguson said. "We just have to do a better job in the future. But I don't think it taints the election."
Ferguson fought against allowing the party to use Internet voting for the first time in this year's presidential selection process because he said it would discriminate against minority and low-income voters who lacked access to the Internet.
The Dean and Kerry campaigns set up their own toll-free line to help voters find their new caucus site if the old one had been moved.
The state Democratic Party had posted the caucus sites on its Web page and mailed Democratic voters a list of caucus sites statewide, but that list now is inaccurate. The party was getting lots of calls on its own toll-free hot line Saturday and was supposed to be giving voters the most up-to-date information on the caucus sites.
Some caucus sites also ran out of ballots. Berringer said a caucus site at Creston High School in Grand Rapids ran out of ballots at 11 a.m. and had to ask voters to wait while it got more copies.
Brewer said caucus officials who ran out of ballots were able to get more from local party officials or have more copies made.
"Part of this is, it's very difficult to tell where turnout is going to be," he said early Saturday afternoon. "There are caches of extra ballots all over the state."
Tens of thousands of voters were expected to vote at the caucus sites Saturday. More than 25,000 mail-in ballots had been counted and at least 50,000 people had voted over the Internet by early Saturday afternoon.
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EDITOR's NOTE: Kathy Barks Hoffman heads the Lansing AP bureau and has covered Michigan politics since 1986.
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Michigan Democratic Party caucus site toll-free number: 877-433-6546.
Dean campaign caucus site toll-free number: 800-317-9818.
Kerry campaign caucus site toll-free number: 800-435-9498
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CkG
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