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Voting rights activists and good governance groups are demanding action after some Democratic voters were told they were ineligible to vote due to incorrect party identification on their voter registration.
The elections office estimates that at least 750 voters who were automatically registered through the Department of Motor Vehicles have incorrect party identification due to a “clerical error.” On Saturday, it updated the number to 764 affected voters, 328 in New Castle County and 87 in the city of Wilmington. A spokesman said the office had finished correcting the incorrect registrations.
Longtime Wilmington resident Darron Swann said he was looking forward to voting for the first time last week before being told he was not affiliated with any party and would not be allowed to vote in the primary. He said he will register as a Democrat in March 2023.
“I feel like I didn’t have to experience this,” he said. “It was a terrible experience for me as a citizen.”
Swann also said he did not receive the correct ballot because the Wilmington mayoral election was not listed on it. After several hours and several phone calls, the “mistake” was identified as the problem at the DMV and he was allowed to vote using the correct ballot.
“I’m new to this process. It was disheartening for me,” he said. “I’m pretty resilient, but there were so many seniors there and it was just awful to see that kind of ignorance at the ballot box.”
Andrew Berstein, Cozen Voting Rights Fellow at the ACLU Delaware, said they have begun receiving complaints from voters who learned they were ineligible to vote last week when early voting began.
The Delaware Coalition for Open Government (DELCOG) sent a letter to the New Castle County Board of Elections saying it was aware of two young women who registered as Democrats in April and were initially barred from voting during early voting. After the voters visited the election office with proof of their Democratic registration, their party affiliation was updated so they could vote, the letter said.
It’s unclear whether voters in the northern part of the state are more affected, but activists and some Wilmington candidates have unleashed a wave of criticism of the elections board. Wilmington mayoral candidate Velda Jones-Potter and her supporters say the problem appears to be more widespread in Wilmington than in other areas.
“I know many situations personally because I and members of my team have been there,” Jones-Potter said. “The Elections Office has not been open and transparent in providing all the information about the scale, scope and geographic impact of this problem.”
DOE spokeswoman Cathleen Hartsky-Carter said no voters were turned away because of the issue and that all affected voters were given the opportunity to cast their ballots. She did not address Jones-Potter’s claim that the agency lacked transparency on the matter. An update Saturday said the problems were limited to the polling place at the Police Athletic League in Wilmington.
At least one voter apparently was unable to cast a ballot because of the typo. Alicia Clark, founder of the Delaware Faith in Action Network, said she knows of an 83-year-old woman who was turned away and told she would not be allowed to vote in the September primary. Clark’s group organizes events such as Souls to the Polls, a campaign to get voters to the polls.
“Her daughter said she went to vote with her mother and was told there was a problem with her registration – her party – and she had to fill out a form, which she did. She was told they would fix it, but she would be able to vote in November,” Clark said. “That’s what she was told. So that disproves (the election board’s) statement that no one was turned away, because that’s not true.”
