An undetermined number of students who registered to vote through the student-run organization Tufts Votes this semester will find that they are ineligible to cast a ballot on Election Day next week.
Tufts Votes failed to postmark a number of registration forms by the Oct. 13 due date, as required by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Forms postmarked after this date leave voters ineligible to vote in the Nov. 2 election, though they will be registered for all future elections.
According to Janice Joyce, an employee in the Registrar Voter's Office in the Election Department of Medford City Hall, "many" Tufts Votes registration forms were sent to the Elections Division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth in Boston with a postmark date of Oct. 18.
They were sent back to the Medford Election Department with the original Oct. 18 postmark.
"The answer from Boston was 'no;' they were received too late," Joyce said.
About 75 forms were received with late postmarks from all over Medford, according to Joyce. She could not immediately confirm how many of them were from Tufts.
At least two students who registered in Somerville through Tufts Votes will not be able to vote for the same reason, according to Louise McCarthy, deputy elections commissioner for Somerville.
Among them is freshman Ellen Carter, who said she registered with Tufts Votes in the Mayer Campus Center "definitely before Oct. 13."
Carter was not aware of the fact that she would not be able to vote next Tuesday until contacted by a reporter yesterday afternoon.
"I never expected to hear this from someone on the newspaper," she said. "I can't believe they weren't going to tell us."
According to Joyce, "Medford simply does not have the resources" to contact all the voters who sent in their registrations with late postmark dates, she said. "We're very busy right now with making sure the elections run smoothly."
Joyce said other Massachusetts cities such as Malden and Everett have not notified voters whose registration forms came in late.
"If [students] haven't received an acknowledgement letter from Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin, then they are not registered," Joyce said. "Every new voter, voter who changes his or her address or party should have already gotten one."
Senior Mary Smith, the head of Tufts Votes, says the votes were delivered late for two reasons.
"Many people took a form from us and didn't fill it out immediately or had a form of their own," she said. "They went on to give these to their RAs who gave them to me, but not until after the Oct. 13 deadline."
According to Smith, some RAs turned forms in as late as last week.
The other reason behind the late forms is a "miscommunication," according to Voices for Change (VOX) President Judy Neufeld.
VOX volunteered to help in Tufts Votes by registering students to vote in the Campus Center from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1.
Neufeld said she gave the forms collected by VOX to a student volunteer who did not give them to Smith until after the Oct. 13 date had passed.
Both Smith and Neufeld said they shared the blame with this student.
Even though she knew the forms were late, Smith said she still sent them in "just in case."
McCarthy said such problems are "unfortunately quite common" when it comes to voter registration drives. "Many times the organizers don't get the forms turned in properly or on time or even lose them," she said. "The poor voter who thinks he or she registered is really left up the creek."
Tufts' registration drive is not the only university-based campaign to experience difficulties. A Rock the Vote press release reports that Bowdoin College students in Brunswick, Maine were asked misleading questions about their residency at voter registration drives, leading to student protest.
And though the Higher Education Act of 1998 requires universities to facilitate student voting registration by providing forms at least 120 days before the deadline, a recent survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Harvard's Institute of Politics showed that over one-third of universities failed to meet all of the bill's requirements.
Despite the problems with Tufts Votes' registration campaign, the group did get approximately 300 registration forms filled out and handed out "hundreds more," Smith said. The group also educated out-of-state students on how to get absentee ballots, she said.
"I think there should be a greater focus on everything else that has happened at Tufts," Neufeld said. "Many students and groups volunteered and worked together to get students informed, mobilized and excited for this next election."
She said that Tufts Votes' work is not yet done.
Student volunteers will drive Tufts students to polling places on Nov. 2 to make sure transportation troubles do not stop Tufts community members from casting ballots.
But even students who are eligible to vote in two states have found themselves temporarily disenfranchised due to the error.
One senior who wished to remain anonymous said she "registered on Oct. 1, way before the Oct. 13 deadline. I'm also registered in my home state but I can't vote there absentee anymore because that deadline's passed too - I thought I'd be voting here in Massachusetts," she said.
"I can only vote if I go back home next Tuesday which I can't do because it's too expensive," the student said. "So I won't be voting for president until 2008."
