Suit filed over rejected NSU voter applications

NORFOLK

Two voting rights groups asserting that Norfolk State University students were improperly denied the right to vote in the 2008 election have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn state law that prohibits full access to voter-application records.

The two groups, Advancement Project and Project Vote, say that Norfolk and the State Board of Elections are in violation of the National Voter Registration Act by denying access to voter-application records.

The groups got involved after hearing from a number of NSU students living on campus who said they were denied the right to vote. Further investigation by the groups revealed an unusually high number of voter-registration rejections, according to Advancement Project officials.

"The rejection rate by the Norfolk city registrar was troubling, given the high influx of new voter registration applications that came from low income, minority, college student, and military applicants," Bradley E. Heard, senior attorney at Advancement Project, said in a statement.

The suit names Elisa Long, Norfolk's general registrar in the Office of Elections, and Nancy Rodrigues, secretary of the State Board of Elections, as defendants.

Heard said Virginia's prohibition on access to voter-registration information is the strictest in the nation. Complaints by out-of-town students trying to vote on Norfolk's college campuses date back more than a decade. Advancement Project and Project Vote sued Norfolk after the 2005 election for virtually the same reason.

But after the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of the two groups, the Virginia General Assembly passed a revised access law making voting applications and rejection letters open only to registrars and the individual voter.

Information in the public voter rolls, such as lists of registered voters and those who voted in the last election, remain available to anyone.

Heard, the Advancement Project attorney, said the groups need to see the applications to determine whether they were properly rejected. Voter registrars typically reject applications when they contain out-of-state addresses or missing information.

"Our goal is to make sure that people are not being denied the right to be registered to vote," Heard said in an interview Wednesday.

Though the lawsuit specifically targets Norfolk, the issue has statewide implications.

"Student registration issues have been a problem in several college towns in the commonwealth," Heard said. "Norfolk, in particular, the registrar seems to take a very restricted view of who's qualified."

State and city elections officials declined to comment because they had not yet seen the suit.

Project Vote's aggressive voter-registration campaigns have been criticized in the past. Following similar voter-registration complaints during the 2005 election, the State Board of Elections conducted an investigation and found Project Vote's campaign troubling. The board recommended criminal prosecution for possible voter-registration fraud.

At the time, Long, Norfolk's general registrar, said her staff noticed red flags in Project Vote's applications, including high numbers of incomplete applications, late applications, different handwriting and ink on the same forms and altered applications.

Tim McGlone, (757) 446-2343, tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com