Some student voters who say they registered to vote before the Oct. 22 deadline are being forced to cast provisional ballots at polling sites around UCLA if they want to vote, which means their votes will not be counted tonight.
Poll workers at Rieber Hall told Olivia Hansell she was not on the list of voters registered to cast a ballot at that location, she said.
Hansell, a second-year human biology and society student and Rieber Vista resident, said she registered to vote on Bruin Walk through CALPIRG two or three days before the registration deadline. She also checked her voter status online to make sure she was registered to vote at the Rieber Hall location, she said.
The Daily Bruin spoke to at least six other students at Hill polling sites who faced similar problems. This is a county-wide problem, said Allison Schall, a volunteer for the voting coalition Election Protection. Schall has been to six polling sites today where this is happening, and said some places are running out of provisional ballots.
Until about 5:30 p.m., the Rieber polling station was checking in voters using incomplete lists, said L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk spokeswoman Monica Flores. This means some students had to cast provisional ballots. Those votes will be counted Wednesday morning after their registration status has been verified, instead of tonight.
The Rieber polling center has two supplemental lists of voters who have registered recently, in addition to an original list of previously registered people. But the polling center was only using the original list and the newest supplemental list, instead of both supplemental lists, Flores said. She said around 5:45 p.m. that she had spoken to the site inspector and told the inspector to begin using both.
However, Lanice Thomas, the Rieber polling site inspector, said around 5:50 p.m. that the L.A. County Clerk’s office told her to only use the latest supplemental list, and other voters whose names were not on a list would need to fill out provisional ballots.