Thursday, March 16, 2017

Douglas County Election Commissioner's dubious voter registration instructions


Update: Shortly after AKSARBENT criticized the Douglas County Election commission, we noticed that Election Commissioner Brian Kruse started following us on Twitter. So we revisited the commission's web site and noticed that the ID requirements section had quietly been changed, with the highlighted section added. The commission even corrected its grammar ("who register" replaced "that register). Good! We like government agents who listen to legitimate criticism and respond appropriately.

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Look at at this unnecessarily vague explanation of voter ID requirements when registering by mail:


     We assume that only one of the enumerated documents is necessary and that most people would share that assumption. However, nowhere in the voter ID requirements are voters explicitly told how many of the enumerated documents are necessary to verify identification!
     An apprehensive person could easily conclude that ALL the documents are necessary, decide that s/he can't provide the necessary documentation and be discouraged from registering.
     In an era in which court cases are decided by the absence of the Oxford comma, there's no excuse for this.
     Also, it's "for those WHO register," not "for those THAT register."
     The Douglas County Election Commission could learn a lot from the Nebraska DMV, which isn't sloppy about specifically describing required documents necessary to obtain a driver's license:

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