Hodges Addresses Voter I.D. Issues By Jerry Sena Watauga County Director of Elections Jane Hodges was unequivocal Thursday in response to unconfirmed reports by a local Democratic Party official that a handful of Appalachian State University students had been barred from voting when questions of their eligibility were raised by poll workers. She said her office has a strict policy of vote first and ask questions later. “I have asked all of my precinct officials who were working those sites, and no one has been turned away for lack of I.D.,” Hodges said emphatically. “We were reported to the state board for that girl — they said it was a girl who went to vote and had showed I.D., and had not had proper ID and was turned away. I have questioned all my officials thoroughly and that had not happened. I told (state officials), ‘Whenever I heard it, I questioned it thoroughly.’” Hodges is convinced the incident never occurred. “It has not happened. I want that girl to come in front of me personally, and I’ll take her in front of whatever official (is responsible).” Hodges said only about 150 of the county’s 35,000 registered voters would need to show identification at the polls anyway. Reasons for that vary from case to case, but the most frequent is that voters sometimes fail to provide evidence of identity required on registration forms. “One thing is a North Carolina driver’s license number,” Hodges said. “If they gave that number and it’s correct and it matches in our database with the driver’s license number in the DMV database, then they’re not going to have to give identification. Hodges explained that if identification is required, the computer will prompt the poll worker to ask for it. She said a window pops up and tells them it is due to lack of identification, or certain things not matching. An e-mail obtained by The Mountain Times Wednesday morning addresses an incident alleged to have occurred Friday, Oct. 15, at the Agricultural Conference Center, in Boone, one of two locations made available since Oct. 14 for early voting in Watauga County. “An incident on Friday during ‘Early Voting’ at the Agricultural Conference Center highlights the potential problems that newly registered ASU students may face in trying to exercise their right to vote locally this year,” begins the e-mail, signed by Watauga County Democratic Party Secretary Jerry Williamson and disseminated this week to other Democratic Party officials. Williamson goes on to describe the alleged experience of a female ASU student who claims to have been turned away by an Ag Center poll worker when the address on her Florida driver’s license did not match the address on the voter rolls. If true, Williamson, Hodges and the North Carolina State Board of Elections, all agree the poll-worker’s actions would have been unjustified. Furthermore, Hodges said, their workers have been thoroughly trained on exactly what criteria satisfy election law. The emphasis, she said, is not on verifying the voter’s address, but assuring the person voting matches the name on the roll. “A picture I.D.,” Hodges said. “So long as it has a picture of you and your name under it, we’ve got you covered. The address doesn’t matter.” ASU student I.D.s are sufficient, she confirmed, as are several other means of identification if picture I.D. is not an option. Phone and utility bills, government checks, non-governmental paychecks, bank statements, any official government document will do, so long as it displays your current physical address — no P.O. boxes allowed. Even a valid Florida driver’s license should be plenty acceptable. If all else fails and a voter finds herself at the polls without a shred of proof she is who she says she is, Hodges assures she will be able to vote just the same. “It’ll be a provisional ballot,” she allowed. “But a person who votes today will still have a week and a half to come back with valid I.D. and make their vote good.” Williamson was unavailable for comment, but his wife, Pam Williamson, has also been active in the party’s ongoing election efforts. She said she believes the incident, assuming it happened as reported, was the exception, not the rule. “I know Jane Anne (Hodges) is doing everything she can to educate the workers at the polls,” Williamson said in a telephone interview Thursday morning. “I’m hopeful these are just a few incidents that somehow slipped in under the radar. We just had a whole bunch of students go over and vote (last Wednesday) and they had no problems whatsoever.” Jerry Williamson closes his e-mail with a resolute statement: “Local Board of Elections Supervisor Jane Anne Hodges is very clear on the rules; unfortunately, not all poll workers appear to be equally clear. And we are very intent that no intimidation of ASU student voters will be allowed to go on in Watauga County this year.” Rosemary Blizzard, elections liaison for the N.C. State Board of Elections, sent out a memorandum last month clarifying requirements for valid identification at the polls. “There has been a great deal of discussion about the use of a photo I.D.,” writes Blizzard in the Sept. 16 memo addressed to all county boards of election. “It is not the intent of HAVA (Help Americans Vote Act) to use the I.D. requirement as proof of residency; rather it is intended to reasonably establish the identity of the voter.” Blizzard goes on to emphasize that the I.D. must be current; expired cards do not meet the HAVA requirement. Allegations of voter frustration notwithstanding, pulling off a glitch-free election is somewhat more complicated than planning your average bake sale. Hodges meets the challenge with long hours and training — lots of training. “According to general statutes, the director of the board of elections and the board members are required to train the judges — and that’s the chief judge and the other two judges,” Hodges said. “And we go beyond that and train our assistants also. “We train them what to do from the time they open the polls until they close it,” she said. “We tell them what they need to prepare and get ready before the election and the things they can expect on election day. We talk about the normal voter — which is about 95 percent of our voters — and then we’ll talk about the other five percent, which are voters who have a problem or that we incur a problem with. “For example they’ve moved more than 30 days ago, or less than 30 days ago, or they’ve moved totally out of the county, or in the county. Or they can’t find their registration on the books; or the deceased voter; the voter we’re going to have to require to vote provisional because there is a problem with their registration of some sort.” And the list goes on. “We talk about the felon; we talk about the media. We tell (poll workers) that (journalists) have the right within the constitution to report; we talk about where (reporters) can be and where they cannot be; we talk about electioneering; we talk about absentee (voters); we talk about assisting voters. We talk about the buffer zone (the 50-foot radius around all polling places within which politicking is prohibited); we talk about closing; we talk about what to do if there’s people standing in line at 7:30. We really detail it. We give them numbers to call for voter information, we give them numbers to call for emergencies. We talk about the machines we’ll be using, and what to expect with each machine.” The flood of details can be overwhelming, but Hodges said about 70-75 percent of precinct workers have years of experience managing the polls. And 90-95 percent of poll judges are veterans of election days past. “We have some that I would say have worked for 30 years,” Hodges said. Each precinct is staffed by at least three workers and the quantity is always an odd number. The party affiliation of the chief judge at each location is determined by the governor’s party, she said. “Right now, the governor is a Democrat, so my chief judge is a Democrat. My two other judges, I have a Democrat judge and a Republican judge. And then if I have assistants, I have a Democrat assistant offsetting every Republican. Partisanship, Hodges insists, has never been a problem. “No. One thing they are all trained very strongly on, once they start there that morning they are to be non-partisan,” she said. “They take an oath to that effect. And nothing that occurs in a voting booth will ever be told, unless it’s in a proceeding in a court of law.” “And if anyone has any problems, I’m always accessible by phone here. I’m here from about six in the morning until nine at night and I’m answering the phone every time it rings — after hours and before hours. If they’ve got a problem, I want to hear about it because I want to make sure that everybody gets to vote who is eligible to vote.”