County reports record number of new voters

Missouri is investigating cases of possible voter fraud.

By Gretchen Mahan

Published Oct. 14, 2008

Boone County officially broke the record for new voter registration with a total of 21,220 new registrations this year, but the registration process across Missouri remains complicated as evidenced by recent controversy of voter fraud.

The new record is slightly more than the previous record of 20,805 in 2004.

The Boone County Clerk's office received many more registrations than what was expected, completing more than 4,000 new registrations since Sunday.

"We've actually been planning for the last year-and-a-half for this to be a record year," Boone County Clerk Wendy Noren said.

Throughout the year, Boone County had been trailing the record of 2004.

Other counties including Cape Girardeau County and Scott County in southeast Missouri broke records earlier this month. Noren said she was disappointed that Boone County hadn't been doing as well.

"I was feeling a little left out," Noren said.

The office still needs to work through the verification process, which has been slightly delayed due to Columbus Day on Monday, on which the security administration shut down its system.

Voters are now able to check their registration online to find their polling place, unless there was a problem with their address.

As soon as the verification process is complete, which will probably take until the end of the week, the clerk's office will send out mailing forms to voters to retrieve any missing information.

The only option for the people did not get their information in before the deadline will be to vote using a provisional ballot. Only the ballots of those who can prove that they should have been eligible to vote will be counted.

With several states under scrutiny for voter fraud, people are questioning whether the registration process is reliable.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has received allegations in 11 states stating that they are involved in voter fraud.

Some of the allegations against ACORN include turning in multiple registrations with the same signature in Indiana, the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys in Nevada and unverifiable addresses in Missouri.

Jeff Ordower, Midwest director of ACORN, said the Jackson County Election Board found 85 duplicate registrations and 35 where the addresses could not be verified.

"Some of those we flagged and some of them are going to get through," Ordower said.

Ordower said that because of the sheer number of registrations ACORN sent into Missouri offices, they most likely would have missed some of the questionable registrations.

This is why state offices are required to re-verify all the registrations.

"No one should have any worry that people who aren't supposed to be voting will be voting," Ordower said.

Tina Hervey, spokeswoman for the Missouri Republican Party, said voter fraud "undermines the fabric of our country,"

If this is allowed to go unchecked, Harvey said, this year's election could be similar to the 2000 presidential election, in which a recount of Florida's votes delayed the certification of the election results by two months, but on a larger scale.

"If we can't trust the system, I don't know how we'd trust the results," Hervey said.

Ryan Hobart, spokesman for the Missouri Secretary of State, said the registration process remains secure.

"There is a thorough process in place for verifying voter registrations in Missouri, and it catches registrations that are questionable before they get on the voter rolls," Hobart said.

The Secretary of State's office sent out a news release on Friday commending the Jackson County Election Board for identifying questionable registrations.

The release also stated that the office has been in contact with Jackson County election officials and recommended that the "questionable" applications be forwarded.