County registration numbers skewed due to inactive voters

Between May 17 and Oct. 13, the Monroe County Voter Registration Office has processed 2,749 new voter registrations, according to its records.

While that figure might seem to be a lot from a surface glance, a look at the same statistic for 2008 shows something much different.

For roughly the same date range in 2008 during the previous elections, the voter registration office reported 10,140 new registrations in Monroe County.

“Certainly, registrations from 2008 were pretty heavy, so the figures will be pretty high,” Jim Fielder, Monroe County clerk, said.

Overall, though, the total number of people registered in the county has remained roughly the same since the last election.

This year, there are 91,313 registered voters in the county, compared to 91,532 during the last election.

“We have a lot of inactive voters in Monroe County,” Fielder said.

He said the state has a system for determining which voters are inactive or might have moved elsewhere.

This leads to some inactive voters being removed from Monroe County voting records every year.

But even that system designed to streamline the numbers and maintain more accurate records isn’t fail proof.

There are people registered to vote in Indiana who have long since moved out of state, Dale Simmons, co-general counsel for the Indiana State Elections Division, said.

He explained even when people register to vote in another county or state, their existing registration in Indiana doesn’t disappear.

Usually the state can merge a duplicate record between two counties, but it cannot do so between states.

This leads to highly inflated voter registration figures, such as the 88,560 people registered to vote in Monroe County for the primary May 4.

Only 12 percent actually voted, the lowest primary turnout in the past 10 years.

But lower voter registration numbers isn’t from lack of trying, Fielder said.

“I feel like we definitely have been trying to encourage folks to register and vote,” he said. “Voter registration has actually gotten so easy now that not a lot of people actually come in and register in person.”

Though the deadline to register for the Nov. 2 midterm election has passed, U.S. citizens should remember to register before the next municipal or primary election.

According to Indiana state law, students may register either in their home precinct, no matter what state they are from, or here in Bloomington.