Worcester Election Commission

In the year 2000 I wrote the Worcester election Commission to inform them that the previous two owners of my house were still regstered to vote at my address. In response that letter I was assurred that it was an anomoly and they couldn't imagine how it happened because they had a system that corrected for such things, it would be corrected promptly. Every election since I have checked the people registered at my address, and sure enough, nothing has changed.

In December 2008, having lost my job, I thought it would be a nice, public-spirited thing to do, and wouldn't hurt my resume either, to offer to perform an analysis of the voter "deregistration system" and recommend or build a solution to whatever problem is discovered in the analysis phase. In a month I got no reply - not even an acknowledgement that the proposal was received - so I sent a followup note asking for confirmation that the original note had been received and asking what the disposition was. Here is the response I got from the City Clerk.

Mr. Payne,

I received, read and appreciate the content of your December 4, 2008 email. The work that is involved in the maintenance of the databases at the City Clerk and Election Commission Offices is aptly attended to by the staff. Thank you for taking time to write.

David J. Rushford
Worcester City
Clerk
508-799-1122 - desk
508-826-1595 - mobile

To which I replied,

Perhaps then, you can explain the extra people who have been registered
to vote at my address for the past 10 years.

- Steve Payne

I don't expect a reply. Clearly, Mr. Rushford was being as polite as he could be with me when he wrote his reply. While I don't think this is a matter of serious importance, especially in these days of extreme busget shortfalls which are crippling all levels of government in their abilties to cover their areas of responsibility, and especially in Massachusetts where Republicans in office are pretty rare, it is also abhorent to me that my town appears to have a problem with inaccurate voter registration rolls and the person reponsible claims that the area is being "aptly attended to". It sounds like such a Bush Administration response to an issue being raised. Rushford may be right, but I would venture a guess that he has no idea if it is being aptly attended to or not. Probabaly all he really knows is that people are getting registered, people vote, and votes are tallied. Worst case is that he is complicit in preserving the inaccuracies for the purposes of swinging elections one way or another. I am frankly surprised that a civil servant is taking such an attitude since he would look pretty bad if this issue ever got broad exposure.

Is it worth raising the issue to another level - bringing it to the attention of the press, for example? I probably won't do it because to do so, acknowledging that it is not an important issue, makes it just a pissing contest with Rushford and who wants to lose that contest?

This whole thing though, reminds me that I still $300 being held hostage by an auto insurance company in NJ. These days where the failure of oversight and regulaory agengies is being exposed left and right illustrates that the NJ Insurance Commissioners office is not alone in its failure to protect consumers from greed and corruption in financial organizations. More on this later.