Indiana Voter ID Law Emerges as a Significant Issue; Scattered Problems Reported Throughout Both Primary States

WASHINGTON, DC — As polls closed across both North Carolina and Indiana last night, the Election Protection Coalition reported receiving nearly 800 calls to the Voter Protection Hotline throughout the day. Election Protection and its diverse group of partners, which comprises the nation’s largest nonpartisan voter protection coalition, responded to voting problems through a comprehensive voter protection program. Nearly 100 citizen and legal volunteers answered calls on the 1-866-OUR-VOTE Hotline and monitored polling places throughout both primary states.

Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Right’s Voting Rights Project said, “As this historic primary season has progressed, record numbers of voters have turned out to exercise their fundamental right to vote. It is unfortunate, however, that many of these eligible voters were disenfranchised and unable to cast a ballot. In state after state, including both North Carolina and Indiana, we’ve seen eligible voters lose their right to vote because of poorly trained poll workers, problems with voting machines and inaccurate voter registration rolls.”

“Today, Election Protection volunteers spoke to thousands of voters. We protected voting rights by answering questions, resolving problems, and advocating on behalf of voters. We learned that students, elderly persons, women, persons of color and even nuns are at risk of disenfranchisement,” said Myrna Perez, counsel at the Brennan Center.

One of the most closely watched issues going into the primaries today was Indiana’s photo identification law, requiring voters to present a government issued ID before casting a vote. Election Protection received a significant number of calls and complaints regarding the law, which was recently upheld by the US Supreme Court. In one example, a freshman student at St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, called the coalition hotline after she was denied the right to vote because she only possessed an ID from a private college. The poll workers, nuns at a local convent, were trying to help the young student through her problem. While doing so, and prior to the student’s incident, they realized that some of their fellow nuns were also prevented from voting because of Indiana’s restrictive photo identification law. In fact, they later realized that several floors of retired nuns in their convent would not be able to vote in the Indiana Primary Election.

“I saw many instances throughout the day where people were not able to vote because of confusion about Indiana’s photo ID law, both among voters and poll workers,” said John Borkowski, Esquire, a partner at law firm Hogan & Hartson and Lawyers’ Committee board member who witnessed this incident firsthand. “The law definitely had the effect of preventing many people who were highly motivated to participate in this primary election from exercising their right to vote. It seems very ironic to me that a law intended to prevent voter fraud prevented members of a single community, essentially a family, who have lived together for years, from accepting the votes of their own sisters.”

Confusion about voter ID requirements in Indiana threatened to prevent a registered member of the military from voting-a caller reported to Election Protection that poll workers refused to accept his current U.S. Military ID, claiming that it was insufficient identification. Fortunately, the caller was able to speak with a precinct judge who corrected the poll workers.

Students also experienced problems in both states. In Indiana, students at Purdue University weren’t able to use their state-issued photo IDs to vote because the cards lack an expiration date, while in North Carolina multiple students who had registered by the deadline were still denied the right to vote.

(Editor’s note: Purdue students were permitted to use their University issued student ID cards at *select* polling places, and the polling places were published in all of the campus publications and on local tv news, radio, and off campus newspapers.)

Problems emerged with absentee ballots as well. Voters at a nursing home in Hancock County, Indiana received incorrect absentee ballots-residents who had requested Democratic ballots received Republican ballots, and vice versa.

Other Indiana incidents include:

• Multiple reports of voting machine problems, including from a school teacher who had to leave without casting a ballot because he had to get to school before classes started. Some voters were not offered paper ballots when machines went down, and countless voters left without casting a ballot.
• A voter, previously convicted of a misdemeanor, was prevented from voting by a poll worker. Election Protection provided him with the code provision which dictates that only those convicted of a felony and those incarcerated cannot vote.

The Lawyers’ Committee, along with primary May 6 partners, Democracy North Carolina, the Brennan Center for Justice and NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and other partners across both states recruited, trained and deployed legal volunteers to help voters at the polls, in the courts and through the 1-866- OUR-VOTE Hotline. As Election Protection’s interim report on previous primaries across the country this election year suggests, the infrastructure that supports the nation’s election system often breaks down preventing countless eligible voters from accessing their right to vote.

For more information about Election Protection and the 1-866-OUR-VOTE and Hotline, or to read the Lawyers’ Committee’s report, please visit www.866ourvote.org.

Purdue police investigate attempted laptop theft in Meredith Hall

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University police are investigating the attempted theft of two laptop computers from a room in Meredith Residence Hall on Friday (April 11).

According to police, a student walked into her room on the second floor shortly before 3 p.m. to find two men there. One of them was carrying a dark-colored duffle bag, Purdue police Capt. John Cox said. She confronted the men and pulled the two laptops from the bag.

The men immediately ran from the room and were seen leaving Meredith Hall on foot, Cox said.

The student told police both men are black. One was described as about 6 feet 2 inches tall, with shoulder-length braided hair. He was wearing a black hoodie and blue jeans and carrying the duffle bag. The other was described as approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall, with a heavy build. He was wearing a plain, black T-shirt and blue jeans.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Purdue Police Department at (765) 494-8221 or call the department’s anonymous tip line at (765) 496-3784.

Purdue student falls prey to advance fee scam, PUPD issues warning to community

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University police are warning of a potential advanced fee scam involving the online purchase of personal items.

According to police, a student advertised a DVD player for sale for $175 on his Facebook account. A short time later, the student received an e-mail from a person who wanted to buy it and send payment by mail.

“The e-mailer told the student he would receive a check for $2,850, and that the student was to deposit the check, take $175 out for the purchase of the DVD player and an extra $30 for himself,” Lt. Fred Davis said. “When he received the check, the student deposited it into his checking account, then sent $2,400 via Western Union to where he was told to do so.”

Afterward, the student checked his bank account and noticed he was overdrawn, Davis said.

“In these types of cases, the bank will determine that the original check was bogus in about 24 hours, and the person who made the bank transaction then becomes liable for the full amount of the bad check” Davis said.

Davis said people should never take part in a transaction involving an overage payment.

“Anytime a seller receives a check for more than the purchase price, that should be a big tip of a scam,” he said.

Davis said anyone who suspects a scam can go online to the Internet Crime Complaint Center Web site http://ic3.gov to report it and for information on current scams taking place

Anyone who has been contacted about making such a transaction should report it to Purdue police at (765) 494-8221.

Whoa, this is new!

If this isn’t your first visit to the Lafayette Online Dining Guide, you’re probably wondering what the heck is going on here. What’s going on is that the Dining Guide, a part of Lafayette Online for more than 12 years, has gotten a facelift.

Was something wrong with the old Dining Guide?
The old ratings system we were using was neat; however, it wasn’t designed to handle the quantity of reviews we had and it wasn’t terribly resistant to people trying to inject spammy fake reviews into the system (which also contributed to gumming up the works). When the “works” got particulary mucked up, the system would sort of eat itself. So between the time required to manually reject all of the spam, and the system eating itself periodically, it was getting to be a hassle to manage it.

How does the new and improved Dining Guide compare to the old?
Our new Dining Guide is built on WordPress and has all sorts of new gadgets and gizmos like…

• spam filtering for the comments
• a shiny new AJAX-y graphic rating system
• new RSS feeds for official reviews and for user contributed comments
• a new Flickr photo sharing group for contributing your pictures of and from local restaurants 

We’ll probably keep adding cool stuff, and when we do, we’ll post it here in the Food News category.