CRITICS ATTACK 'MOTOR VOTER'

Thousands of drivers in Cape Girardeau and surrounding counties have registered to vote at license bureaus in the past two years, driving up registration rolls and possibly contributing to duplicate voter registrations.

Critics of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, commonly called "motor voter," say it has facilitated voter fraud. Some lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., want to revise the law, while others want to scrap it entirely.

But Southeast Missouri election officials say they have experienced few problems with license bureau registrations and applaud the law's effectiveness.

"It helps keep down long lines of people trying to register or get address changes," Cape Girardeau County Clerk Rodney Miller said. People no longer have to make a trip to his office for those things.

Miller doesn't blame the motor voter law for duplicate registrations, although he concedes some people do forget they are registered and re-register when they are at the license bureau.

Cape Girardeau County earlier this year had about 1,400 voters on its rolls who the secretary of state's office said might be registered elsewhere in the state, but only about 430 names will be removed due to verified duplication.

The number of people on the county's voter rolls jumped from 35,165 in November 1992 to 47,803 in the November 2000 election, an increase of nearly 36 percent. The county's population grew only 11.5 percent over the last decade.

In the last two years combined, license bureaus have registered 7,612 new voters in Cape Girardeau, Scott, Bollinger and Perry counties through the motor voter law, state records show.

That's more than twice as many as registered at county clerks' offices and voter registration drives in those counties.

Registering vs. voting

But more voters don't necessarily mean more voting. While 82 percent of Cape Girardeau County voters turned out for the 1992 presidential election, only 63 percent voted in the hotly contested 2000 presidential election. Sixty-nine percent voted in 1996.

Jackson factory worker Richard Mayfield said he registered to vote in Cape Girardeau County in December when he renewed his driver's license. He first registered in Bollinger County in 1986, but doesn't remember ever actually voting.

He has lived in Cape Girardeau County for the past 11 years. Mayfield said registering at the Jackson License Bureau was convenient -- he probably wouldn't have made a special trip to the county clerk's office just to register.

"I just never really thought about it too much really," he said.

Kim Taylor of Cape Girardeau registered to vote when she renewed her driver's license last week. Taylor moved to Cape Girardeau from Texas a couple of years ago, but hadn't taken the time to register.

"I think it is a great thing," Taylor said of the computerized registration system at the license bureau. "I will go out and vote now."

Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt says license bureaus and other state agencies need to be better trained to handle voter applications, which ultimately end up being processed in county clerks' offices.

But overall the motor voter law has helped put people on the voter rolls, Blunt said. "I think it is the sort of thing we want to encourage."

Statewide, more than 1.15 million voter applications were filed in 1999 and 2000 combined, with the highest number -- 519,964 -- handled by traditional election authorities. License bureaus ranked second with 414,686 applications.

Of the total applications statewide, about half were valid, new registrations. The rest included duplicate registrations and address changes, some of which were caused by the advent of 911-emergency addresses for rural residents, said Daniel Hays, election specialist with the Missouri secretary of state's office.

Americans can register to vote at license bureaus, social service and disability offices and other government agencies, as well as at county clerks' and election board offices. They also can register to vote by mail, another provision of motor voter, a practice critics contend can lead to fraud.

"It is impossible to verify on the front end that a person registering exists, is living and breathing," said Deborah Phillips, who heads the Voting Integrity Project, a non-profit voting rights organization in Arlington, Va.

New law possible

Alarmed by thousands of duplicate voter registrations and possible vote fraud in St. Louis in the presidential election in November, Bond introduced a bill in March to amend the motor voter law

He said the evidence in St. Louis in recent elections underscores serious problems with the law. "We have dead people registering by mail," Bond said.

The name of one city alderman, who died 10 years ago, turned up on new-voter registration cards turned in to election authorities just before the March 6 mayoral primary, Bond said.

Allegation of fraudulent registrations have prompted a grand jury inquiry in St. Louis.

"The first obvious problem is the blatant fraud of the bogus voter registrations. With dead people reregistering, fakes names, phony address, and dogs being registered, it is clear the system is being abused," Bond said in a speech in the Senate last month.

Bond singled out mail-in registrations as the main culprit.

His legislation would require persons who register by mail to vote in person and present a photo ID the first time they vote.

Miller, Cape Girardeau County's chief election officer, said his office already follows that procedure, which is required under Missouri law. "Anybody can write names down. There is no question there can be fraud with that," he said of mail-in registrations.

Bond's measure also would allow states to remove names from the voter rolls if follow-up registration cards are returned as undeliverable by the post office and to require mail-in voter applications to be notarized.

Value questioned

Some lawmakers have suggested scrapping the motor voter law entirely. State Sen. Chuck Gross, R-St. Charles, earlier this year proposed abolishing Missouri's law, enacted in 1994 to mirror the federal legislation. Gross said he backed off the idea after learning it could jeopardize federal funding for the state.

State Sen. Bill Foster, R-Poplar Bluff, co-sponsored Gross' bill, which failed to win passage in the legislative session that ended Friday.

Foster said most people who register as an extension of getting their driver's license or renewing their license aren't interested in voting.

Processing the increased applications costs county clerks' time and money, he said.

It also doesn't increase voter turnout, said Foster. "If you are not willing to go to the clerk to register, you probably are not willing to take off and go vote."

Perry County Clerk Randy Taylor says voter turnout has changed little in his county over the past four years even though the number of registered voters has climbed by about 1,000. The county has about 11,000 registered voters.

But Taylor says there's an advantage to have people register at license bureaus. "It catches new people as they move to town," he said. "It takes a lot of pressure off our office."