Secretary of State Tom Schedler and local registrars of voters are cautioning voters across the state to be aware of a voter registration mailing from the Voter Participation Center. The Secretary of State's Office alone has logged hundreds of complaints via telephone and email regarding the ongoing mailings.
Secretary Schedler has responded to VPC's mailing via postal mail and asked them to take responsibility for their actions. VPC should not only be concerned with registering citizens to vote, but the organization must be concerned with and take appropriate actions to maintain integrity in the election process.
"We do not believe that VPC performed proper due diligence in purchasing the list used for the mailing," Secretary Schedler said. "If the mailing had included current information, we would not have had the numerous complaints that were filed with our office. Not only did the list contain dead people, but it also contained minors and felons which opens the door to voter fraud."
The complaints logged by the Secretary of State's Office specifically include pre-filled applications with nicknames; recipients who thought someone was trying to change their name; deceased applicants' names on mailings (in some cases since the 1960s and 1970s); misspelled applicants' names; recipients concerned with identity theft; minor children in receipt of applications; recipients questioning the legitimacy of the pre-filled applications; recipients already registered; addressee on mailing did not live at address; and addressee on mailing lives and is registered in another state.
Local registrars of voters also logged complaints including the aforementioned information in addition to signatures not matching signatures on file in the Registrar of Voters Office and applications mailed to convicted felons.
For more information about the Secretary of State's Elections Division, visit www.GeauxVote.com.