Talk Show Host Calls Committee to Action About Poll Problems
By Mercia Williams-Murray
WI Staff Writer
Thursday, April 24, 2008

  
Rep. Robert A. Brady (D-PA), chairman of the House Committee on Administration, called to order a hearing focused on addressing problems that voters nationwide have at the polls.
  
Among those that testified in front of the committee was the executive director of the NAACP National Voter Fund, Gregory T. Moore and famed syndicated radio host, Tom Joyner.
  
“The ‘My Vote’ hotline has received 40,000 calls in 2008,” Brady said. He added that Joyner’s leadership has worked to “educate and inform voters.”
  
Joyner helps oversee the hotline, 1-866-MYVOTE-1, which was developed and is monitored by InfoVoter Technologies, so people with questions about voting and people with problems at the polls in their communities can be aided.
  
Before Joyner began his testimony, an audio featuring people calling into the MYVOTE hotline from many states--but most coming from the Columbus, Ohio and  Atlanta areas--was played.
  
Most of the problems cited by callers were voting machines being down, a limited number of machines, a limited number of express voter machines, a limited number of ID verification machines and people working at the polls having a hard time finding names, which slows down the voting process.
  
“The lines were in the street,” one caller from Georgia said. A caller by the name of Albert Saunders said, “I had a problem with my affiliation.” A female caller from Silver Spring, Md. shared Saunder’s problem.
  
“I was not allowed to vote because the voting pretext did not have me as a member of that party,” she said.
  
However, the woman claimed that she was a registered member under her party for 30 years and had voted during every presidential election during that time span. After additional searches by poll officials, her information was found.
  
Another man on the audio told the hotline that poll workers told him that he was an inactive voter, yet he maintained that he’d recently voted for governor of his state.
  
People with problems like the callers on the audio “were not turned away by billy clubs, or German Sheppard dogs as their parents and grandparents were tow generations ago,” Moore said.
  
He calls these issues and certain “administrative procedures” such as the New HAVA mandated statewide voter list maintenance program, the new enemies of voting rights. The list, according to Moore, may drop names from the list.
  
Committee member Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) responded to the audio by saying, “There are a lot of errors made, by voters and poll workers themselves.”
  
As for people purposefully being disenfranchised, Ehlers said, “That’s a crime and should be handled as such.”
  
However, Ehlers is skeptical that this is the case and is “slow to condemn” polls workers because they only work a few times a year may forget things, many are elderly and most work 12 to 14 hour days.
  
Joyner said that his show, “The Tom Joyner Morning Show” reaches 8 million listeners every week. Most of them are African-American people.
  
Hence, Joyner said, “Along with being called the hardest working man in radio, I am sometimes called the voice of black America.”
  
Joyner noted that when any leader of the country or leading TV network wants to reach out to African-Americans, they come through him. “It’s a huge responsibility,” he said. “And I take it very seriously.”
  
Another part of his responsibility, Joyner said, is to be abreast on the wants and needs of his listeners and to “provide that by entertaining, educating and empowering” them. “The best way to empower our listeners,” he added, “is by registering them to vote.”
  
Joyner said that his partnership with the NAACP voting fund has led to nearly 21,000 people being registered to vote and out of the 45,000 calls to the “MYVOTE” hotline, 20,000 were questions about polling locations. ‘That’s the good news,” Joyner said.
  
However, 4,000 people called in to report problems at polling locations. On Super Tuesday, Joyner said he received nearly 10,000 calls and most calls came from Atlanta.
  
People called to say they were having problems voting. “They call me and I hear the frustration and the anger on my radio show and on the 1-866-MYVOTE-1 hotline,” Joyner said.
  
People who are willing and ready to cast their ballots become discouraged and may even think that problems are being created to purposefully stop them from voting.
  
“Sadly we don’t know how many people were turned away and how many will not return to the polls in November because of their negative experience,” Joyner said.
  
“You need to know about the problems and you need to do what it takes to fix them,” Joyner said to the committee.
  
Joyner urged the committee to get more voting machines to polling locations, do a better job training poll workers by better acquainting them with the machines, add more voter ID verification machines to Georgia polling locations and establish a national voting standard to avoid confusion each and every election.
  
“It is often said by election officials in explaining long lines that there was nothing wrong with their procedures, it was just that ‘too many people showed up to vote’,” Moore said. “Mr. Chairman, too many people showing up to vote should never be a problem in the ‘world’s leading democracy’.”

“America is the greatest democracy in the world,” Brady said. “And out elections should reflect that fact.”