To The Readers’ Forum:

A number of voters in Silver Creek were not in the registered voter lists when they wanted to vote at their polling location in Silver Creek. In one case the person had voted there two years ago and had no knowledge of a change in his “status”. The person in charge said it was because his mailing address was different from his voting residence. She said because of this difference his yellow card notification was returned and he was classified as “inactive” and he would not be allowed to have his vote counted until he filed an amendment with the Chautauqua County Board of Elections.

This caught him and the others by surprise and caused a good deal of confusion and frustration on election night.

This sounded similar to the case in North Carolina where three counties removed voters from the list of registered voters because they had a change of address. This action was ruled illegal by a federal judge and they were instructed to reinstate the affected voters prior to the election. It was considered an act of voter suppression.

The action by the Chautauqua County Board of Elections should be investigated to understand why they choose this process to prevent mobile registered voters from voting.

Thank you

Patrick Gorman

Silver Creek