Monday, April 09, 2012

Computerized Voter Registration Data Not Available To Non-Slated Candidates

Judicial candidates not slated by one of the major parties in Marion County complain that they are unable to obtain computerized lists of registered voters that are made available to slated candidates for office. Democratic candidate Greg Bowes sought an opinion from the state's Office of Public Access Counselor questioning the practice after he and a Republican candidate, Paul Ogden, were both denied access to computerized records of the county's voter registration records. According to the opinion Bowes received from the office, the Marion County Election Board did nothing wrong in denying the requests because the office had no official policy for making the records available. The opinion warned, however, that the Marion County Election Board needed to adopt a formal policy for handling such requests pursuant to I.C. 3-7-27-6(c), which provides the following:

A county voter registration office shall, with regard to voter registration information concerning voters of the county on a computerized system, act in accordance with a nondiscriminatory uniform policy adopted by the county election board. The policy must either permit a person to duplicate or obtain a duplicate copy of a computer tape, computer disc, microfilm, or other similar record system that contains this voter registration information or not permit the person to duplicate or obtain a duplicate copy of the information.
In response to its ongoing dispute with non-slated judicial candidates, the Election Board has scheduled a meeting this morning at 10:00 a.m. in Room 224 of the City-County Building at which it will take up the issue of its policy towards making voter registration records available to the public. It should be interesting to see how the board enacts a "nondiscriminatory uniform policy." Paul Ogden has blogged more about this issue here.

UPDATE: Paul Ogden reports on his blog that the election board voted 2-1 today against adopting a policy for making voter registration records available to candidates on a non-discriminatory basis. According to Ogden, Marion Co. Clerk Beth White cast the dissenting vote, with Chairman Mark Sullivan (D) and Patrick Dietrick (R) voting against the adoption of a policy. It looks like it will take a lawsuit by a candidate denied access to the records to force the board to adopt a nondiscriminatory policy.
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2 comments:

  1. Cato2:38 PM EST

    Attorneys pay the parties to be slated as judges. Corporations and other interested persons pay the parties and elect party members to ensure the right people are slated to be judges.

    This is fraud. I don't know why anyone would respect any ruling or order made by any of these pretend judges who did nothing more than buy their offices by bribing their parties. With every ruling, the Public is entitled to think: "Did your party tell you to rules this way, or you wouldn't be slated, next election?"

    These judges are beholden to their parties and must do the bidding of their party, as party blessing is the only way anyone can become a judge.

    Judicial elections should be free of party declaration, and party affiliation must be stripped from the ballots.

    Since both parties are in it for power, I doubt any politician will have the integrity to introduce necessary to clean up the Marion County judicial elections.

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  2. Marycatherine Barton12:13 AM EST

    Great to learn that Beth cast a dissenting vote; and I certainly agree with Cato, that judicial elections should be free of party declaration.

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