ASUC Voter Drive

Mishandled registration cards block some from voting

By Michael Klein
From the November 2004 Print Edition

A number of Berkeley students and community members were unable to vote in this year’s general election due to the mismanagement of their registration cards turned in to the ASUC Voter Registration Drive.

The Caltopia semester kick-off event on August 27th and 28th ushered in a new school year at UC Berkeley, and the ASUC took advantage of the festive gathering to organize a voter registration drive. The ASUC enlisted the help of the Cal Berkeley Democrats and the Berkeley College Republicans to assist them in their efforts. Hundreds of students and community members registered over the weekend event, and many more continued to fill out forms on campus up until the registration deadline.

Problems began to arise, however, as the election drew nearer. Many people who had registered at Caltopia were finding that their registration forms somehow never quite made it to their destination at the county registrar.

Kerry Eskenas, a sophomore at UC Berkeley and member of the Berkeley College Republicans, is among those who found themselves unregistered after filling out a voter registration form at Caltopia. Eskenas spoke to a member of the Cal Berkeley Democrats about it, who said that her problem could have been because the ASUC “had not approved some of the voter registration forms.”

According to the California Elections Code 2138, it is expected that all “Individuals and organizations distributing voter registration cards…and who receive voter registration cards from voters shall return the completed cards to the county elections official or shall deposit the cards in the postal service within three [business] days of receipt from a voter.”

Immediately following the on-campus voter registration drive, all forms were turned directly into Tiffany Batac, a student who coordinated the voter registration drive under the auspices of the Office of the External Vice President of the ASUC.

In an attempt to contact Batac about her registration problem, Eskenas left several messages for her and did not receive any response. Upon calling the registrar of Alameda County, Eskenas found that her form hadn’t arrived at all. Pursuing the issue further, a phone call to the district attorney revealed that a representative from their office had already visited the ASUC to take some of the withheld voter registration forms. “I was shocked that the ASUC didn’t get in trouble for this,” said Eskenas. “The ASUC gave itself the power to decide which forms were suitable to send and withhold.”

The ASUC Office of the External Vice President, which oversaw the voter registration efforts, conceded that some forms were sent one or two days after the three-day deadline, but denied any illegal activity. “For the most part, we adhered to the three-day limit,” said External Affairs Vice-President Liz Hall. She mentioned that while the three-day limit is law, it is simply there to hold organizations accountable and is not meant to be punitive.

Hall also noted that the ASUC had eventually sent in all the voter registration forms they received. Before sending the forms out to the Alameda County registrar, the ASUC screened them and separated those that were deemed complete and incomplete. Forms that were found to be incomplete were copied first, and then the original was sent. The copy was placed in a file so that the registrants could be notified of their form’s incompletion.

Eskenas stipulates that she was never notified of her form’s “missing information.” Hall said that inevitably some incomplete forms might have been missed in the ASUC screening process. Also, according to Hall, many forms were backed up due to the high volume of cards sent to the registrar.

This problem did not just affect one political or personal group of people. Laura Swenson registered Democratic at the Caltopia event and was among those contacted by the ASUC for having filled out a form “incorrectly.” Swenson proceeded to the ASUC office the next day to fix the errors on the form, but upon arrival, they could not produce her form. Instead, Swenson had to fill out a new form and resubmit it. Weeks later she still hadn’t received a confirmation, and a call to the Los Angeles County registrar said that her form had never arrived at its destination.

Michael Sayre of the Cal Berkeley Democrats organized the club’s volunteer efforts for the Caltopia drive, and said that he wasn’t responsible for the forms after turning them into the ASUC. Sayre also mentioned he’d heard of similar problems from other voters. Amaury Gallais, who headed volunteer efforts for the Berkeley College Republicans, said that he spoke with Tiffany Batac almost three weeks after the Caltopia event and discovered that she had just sent the last forms in, and that some were not sent in at all due to “misspellings.”

Numerous calls and messages to Batac were unanswered at press time.

At issue here is the adherence to California election code 2138 and whether or not the ASUC was justified in screening the forms before submitting them. Whatever resolution may arise, the issue remains that numerous students and community members found themselves mysteriously unregistered and in the dark about their situation on November 2nd. “It really doesn’t matter what happens now; it’s too late,” said UC Berkeley junior Valentina Flores-Perez. “These people didn’t get to vote, and they could’ve just registered somewhere else without the problems.”

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