Capitol Observations - Saturday, November 1, 2008 8:34 - 0 Comments

Election laws must be fairly administered

Federal officials have asked election officials in Alabama and five other states to investigate whether citizenship checks are being improperly run on newly-registered voters. Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue has sent a letter to the secretaries of state of Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio. The Commissioner said those states had submitted “extraordinarily high levels” of citizenship verification requests. Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, most states only have to verify the last four digits of the Social Security Number of people seeking to register to vote if they don’t have a valid state driver’s license. Hopefully, none of these states are trying to influence the outcome of elections in their states by keeping newly registered citizens from voting. Anybody guilty of doing this sort of thing should be held accountable.

Source: Associated Press