Ballots fail to arrive, some student voters say

Student government receives complaints after registration drive

After the Student Government Association ran an absentee voter drive in August, some students were unable to vote, never having received a ballot or a voter registration card.

"We’ve gotten a few complaints about people not receiving their absentee ballots," said senior JohnAlex Golden, vice president of administrative affairs. "I think total we got three or four people either whose requests didn’t go through, or they didn’t fill [registration forms] out properly."

Golden says he is "100 percent sure" all forms were sent in properly, having mailed them himself.

"We checked every ballot. If something was filled out incorrectly, we e-mailed or called every person," Golden said. All ballots were sent out on time, he added. "The problems haven’t been through SGA, though."

All ballots were sent to registrar’s office. The Harrisonburg registrar’s office was unavailable to comment on the issue as of press time Wednesday.

Sophomore Lisa Schuetz said her application never made it to the registar. She tried to register as a voter in Harrisonburg last month so she filled out an application online, printed it and gave it to one of the OrangeBand Initiative’s voter registration tables in Zane Showker Hall. She never received her voter card.

"All three of my roommates got their voter cards and they registered after I did," Schuetz said.
She decided to call the registrar‘s office and find out the problem.

"When I talked to the registrar, she said I wasn’t the first person to call and ask about that problem," Schuetz said. "She checked to see if there was something wrong with [my application], but my name didn’t even come up in the files.

"It’s truthfully my fault," Schuetz said. "I should have mailed it in or taken it down to SGA myself."
Schuetz said she followed up on the matter with a representative from Educational Support Programs because ESP helped set up the tables. The representative said OrangeBand passed the forms on to the SGA, according to Schuetz.

Kai Degner (’03), OrangeBand coordinator, said he heard of the registration problems. "We took the complaint extremely seriously," Degner said.

Degner said OrangeBand contacted all volunteers who might have handled the registrations forms and that no one knew anything about their whereabouts.

"SGA took all of our forms," Degner said.

"We double-checked every registration form we received," Student Body President Tom Culligan said.

"Obviously, we’re concerned about any student who didn’t receive an absentee ballot … We think that everything on our end was done properly. If students are concerned that their information wasn’t received properly, we’re encouraging them to contact their registrar’s office."

The SGA successfully sent out about 3,500 ballot request forms. In addition, JMU had the highest percentage of students participating in the voting process statewide, Golden said.