Voter Registration

Prince William County Voter Registration and Elections Office 9250 Lee Ave., Suite 1 Manassas, Va. 20110 703-792-6470 http://www.pwcgov.org Manassas Voter Registration Office 9025 Center St. P.O. Box 560 Manassas, Va. 20108 703-257-8230 http://www.manassascity.org Manassas Park Registrar of Voters Office 1 Park Center Ct. Manassas Park, Va. 20111 703-335-8806 http://www.cityofmanassaspark.us ...

DENVER — In a bitter fight, Colorado Democrats recently muscled through the Statehouse a massive elections reform bill that allows voters to register up until Election Day and still cast their ballots. It's the latest — and most substantial — development in a nationwide Democratic Party effort to strike back at two years of Republican success in passing measures to require identification at polling places and purge rolls of suspect voters. Democratic-controlled states like...

Record numbers of potential new voters in Southern Maryland stood in long lines Tuesday, deadline day, to make sure their vote would count Nov. 4. "The inside of the office is just packed, and the phones have been ringing off the hook," Tracy Dickerson, director of the Charles County Board of Elections, said Tuesday. The scene was the same in Calvert and St. Mary's counties. "Right now, I see a nonstop line," Gail L. Hatfield, elections administrator in Calvert, said Tuesday afternoon.

The March 31 Metro article " Maryland Assembly near deal on voting " noted the concern of some Republican lawmakers that same-day voter registration could lead to fraud. This fear is unfounded. Ten states and the District have adopted same-day registration during early voting or on Election Day. They have seen higher numbers in voter participation and almost no voter fraud. Potential voters register in person and attest to their identity directly to an election official, under penalty of law. Anyone who tries to vote...

The number of black and Hispanic registered voters has fallen sharply since 2008, posing a serious challenge to the Obama campaign in an election that could turn on the participation of minority voters. In the 2008 election, robust turnout among black and Latino voters is credited with putting Obama over the top in key swing states, including Virginia and New Mexico. Voter rolls typically shrink in non-presidential election years and registrations among whites fell at roughly the same rate, but this is the first time in nearly...

This month, Ferenc Gyurcsány, the former prime minister of Hungary, and three other members of his political party set up tents in front of the parliament building in Budapest and embarked on a week-long hunger strike . They ended it with a rally before thousands of their compatriots — all to protest a proposed law that requires Hungarians to register before voting in the upcoming election. Why so much passionate resistance to registering 15 days before the election? One ally of the protesters went so...

An unprecedented number of voter registration forms have been streaming into the Prince William County registrar's office, and election officials don't expect things to slow down as the Monday registration deadline approaches. "We're getting about 500 applications a day, whereas in a non-election time frame we get about 500 a week," county Registrar Betty Weimer said. "People are very enthusiastic about this election and want to participate in anything to do with it. It's nice to see folks getting excited.

The March 31 Metro article " Maryland Assembly near deal on voting " noted the concern of some Republican lawmakers that same-day voter registration could lead to fraud. This fear is unfounded. Ten states and the District have adopted same-day registration during early voting or on Election Day. They have seen higher numbers in voter participation and almost no voter fraud. Potential voters register in person and attest to their identity directly to an election official, under penalty of law. Anyone...

RICHMOND, Sept. 14 -- Virginia elections officials have ordered an additional 200,000 voter registration forms because of shortages in some parts of the state and an expected crush of new registrants over the next three weeks. The new forms, the first batch of which should arrive at state offices this week, were requested by the State Board of Elections after it distributed nearly 350,000 registration applications in July and August. Many were sent to county elections boards and the Department of Motor Vehicles, but...

A voting rights group and some of the nation's leading researchers on election technology are urging Maryland voters to check the accuracy of their online voter registration files after warning that the data had been left vulnerable to tampering. Researchers at the University of Michigan, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a former president of the Association for Computing Machinery wrote to Maryland officials late last month urging them to take immediate...

SELMA, Ala. — Black leaders commemorating a famous civil rights march Sunday said efforts to diminish the impact of African Americans' votes haven't stopped in the years since the 1965 Voting Rights Act added millions to Southern voter rolls. Hundreds attended a Sunday morning brunch with Vice President Biden, and thousands gathered in the afternoon to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma's annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee. The event commemorates the "Bloody Sunday" beatings of voting-rights marchers by state troopers as the...

The D.C. Board of Elections is pushing back against claims by council candidate Paul Zukerberg that city voter registration rolls contain tens of thousands of discrepancies and faulty addresses. Zukerberg, an attorney who successfully repelled an effort to disqualify him for the April 23 special election, told the Washington Post on Monday that board of elections had to fail to account for 66,000 changes of address from registered voters. Zukerberg is calling on the D.C....

A D.C. Council candidate seeking to decriminalize marijuana has successfully fought off an attempt to disqualify him from the ballot in the April 23 election. The Board of Elections cleared the way on Monday for Paul Zukerberg, a Democrat in the citywide at-large council race, to appear on the ballot. Zukerberg's candidacy was verified after the board concluded he had collected the 3,000 valid signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. A supporter of Democratic candidate Elissa Silverman had...

A controversial change in Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's otherwise popular bill to expand early voting could lead to voter fraud and expose the state's elections to cybersecurity threats, according to a voting group and election technology experts. The provision, sought for more than a year by Maryland's State Board of Elections, would allow any Marylander to receive a password by e-mail to download and mark a ballot at home before mailing it back to elections officials.

While I heartily support the various measures to improve voter registration and voting efficiency and accessibility, described in the Feb. 15 article " Obama hit from both sides on election reform ," citizens can take some steps of their own to make the current system work better. First, they can volunteer to be election officers. Spending one (admittedly long) day and several training hours a year to work at the polls can help make democracy work better. Second, they can prepare themselves to vote before getting...

A bill that would require Virginia voters to show photo identification to cast a ballot is headed to Gov. Robert F. McDonnell after passing along partisan lines Wednesday in the House of Delegates. The Senate proposal passed the House by a vote of 65 to 34. While Republicans maintained that the measure was needed to protect the integrity of the elections process, Democrats said the bill amounted to a "poll tax" that would impose an undue burden on citizens. "We break the trust of those who fought ... for many...

Democrats launched a fresh round of attacks on Republicans over the issue of voter fraud Friday after a man working for a firm under contract to the Republican Party of Virginia was accused of discarding state voter registration forms. Colin Small, 23, of Phoenixville, Pa., was arrested Thursday by sheriff's deputies in Rockingham County, in the state's Shenandoah Valley, on 13 charges of voter registration fraud. The alleged crime happened Monday, when a business owner in Harrisonburg, Va.,...

A federal judge on Thursday blocked key provisions of a ­Florida law regulating groups that organize voter-registration drives, escalating a debate over newly restrictive voter-access laws that have become a major issue in the presidential campaign . The decision by U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle marked the first time a federal jurist has struck down provisions in one of the voting laws passed by nearly 20 states since last year....

President Obama's proposed commission on electoral reform, which seeks to improve voting efficiency and reduce long wait times for voters, is producing heated criticism from advocates on both the right and the left. Some conservatives view the initiative as federal overreaching on an issue that is rightly the province of states, while some voting rights advocates say that the president's proposed commission is a too-timid response to what they see as a huge problem. "Setting up a commission is not...

RICHMOND — The Virginia Senate voted Monday to automatically restore voting rights to nonviolent felons, advancing a key policy priority of both Democrats and Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell . The Senate voted 30 to 10 to pass a resolution to amend the state constitution to allow ex-felons who have paid their debts to society to vote. Currently, they must appeal to the governor to have that right restored. The resolution would still have to clear the House, which earlier...