County, city face inflated voter lists

First lesson, number crunching. According to the Monroe County Clerk's Office, out of a total 97,000 registered voters in Monroe County, only about 30,000 are active. Analysis, professor? More than two-thirds of all registered voters in IU's county are non-voters.\nThere are several contributing factors to the run-on roll. One is that students come and go, said Monroe County Clerk Jim Fielder. \n"College kids finish with school and move back home," Fielder said. "Or they decide to drop out and go back home. Every one of those students represents someone who stays on the voter roll."\nThe backup escalated in 1993, when the National Voter Registration Act, also known as the "Motor Voter Act," prohibited counties from purging inactive voters from their voter rolls.\nAccording to the U.S. Department of Justice Web site, the Motor Voter Act was passed "to remove the vestiges of discrimination which have historically resulted in lower voter registration rates of minorities and persons with disabilities."\nSo the voter rolls have been growing cancerously. Until recently, county officials could do nothing to quell the climbing voter numbers. When a student registered to vote in Monroe County, the roll grew by one. When that same student returned home for good, the number stayed the same.\nThe situation has not been without repercussions. Fielder said Monroe County spends $6,000 per election cycle to run the seven student-exclusive precincts located on campus. \n"It's not uncommon during the primaries to get zero votes in four of the seven precincts," Fielder said, attributing the poor turnout to finals and student apathy. He also said a total of fewer than 100 votes combined from all seven precincts during general elections is a common occurrence.\nBut earlier this year, Indiana legislators sought a remedy with the Voter Maintenance Project, Fielder said. Each county was given less than five months to contact all of their registered voters with mailers to let them know their names would be deleted from voter registration records if they did not vote in the next three elections, from 2004 to 2006. The time frame involved was so small, Monroe County was one of only a handful of Indiana counties to complete the process. \nThe voter list cleanup cost the county $50,000.\nPoor information gathering has augmented the dilemma. Though some students believe they can register in Monroe County and at home, Fiedler said state law clearly allows only one county of voter registration.\nIU College Republicans political director junior Chase Downham said Monroe County should be a more popular place to vote.\n"If you're going to vote in a place that affects you the most and will have the most impact on your life, Bloomington is the place to do it," he said.\nTo erase one's own voting registration, Fiedler said, one needs only to drop a note to the voter registration office with an old address, a request to be removed and a signature.\n"It's unfortunate students don't expunge their records themselves," Downham said. "In a perfect world that would happen."\nThe problem is not limited to transient students. During the recent voter roll clean-up, officials found 700 elderly registered voters who had died in other states, Fielder said.\n"A lot of our elderly have winter homes in Florida, and they pass away," he said.\n-- Contact senior writer Rick Newkirk at renewkir@indiana.edu.