The Daily Press

Nov 4, 2004

Some W&M student voter forms never entered system
By Daphne Sashin

WILLIAMSBURG -- The voter registration tables were the most popular
section of the graduate student orientation fair at the College of
William and Mary. That day in August, dozens of students registered to
vote in Williamsburg.

But when they went to precincts Tuesday, several graduate students -
and other students who sent in applications on their own - learned
that their names were missing from the voter list.

"I was pretty upset," said Chip Phillips, 28, a doctoral student. He
arrived Tuesday afternoon at the Stryker Building on North Boundary
Street - intending to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry for
president - only to learn that his application was never processed.

Williamsburg Registrar David Andrews has been the subject of repeated
criticism this year from some students who say he's unfairly kept them
from registering to vote with local addresses. Three undergraduates
sued him in the spring for the right to vote in Williamsburg. A judge
ordered one of them to be registered; the two others successfully
registered last month through the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

An unknown number of students' applications never made it into
Andrews' system. He said he processed every form that he received and
couldn't explain the missing applications.

"Everything that comes in here is processed the same day," he said.
"If the application is incomplete or something is missing, we'll have
a denial out that day."

Andrews said he never received any forms from the graduate fair.
Because Andrews couldn't attend the event this year, the James City
County Registrar's Office handled all the students' applications. That
office should have sent him the Williamsburg forms to process.

County Registrar Clara Christopher said 34 students filled out
applications that day. They mostly had Williamsburg addresses. She
said that an assistant registrar handled the event and that she didn't
realize there was a problem until Tuesday, when she got a call from
Sam Sadler, the college's vice president for student affairs.

"I'm sorry that people were having a problem," Christopher said. "I'll
do what I can to find out about it."

Students also complained that Andrews or election officials offered
them no other options and discouraged them from filling out
provisional ballots.

Law student Anne-Marie Zell, who lives in an apartment on Merrimac
Trail, said she mailed her application to Andrews' office days before
the deadline. When she hadn't received her voter card by Monday, she
went to his office to find out why.

Andrews had no record of her application.

She said, "Somehow, he started this discussion about how you have to
be legally domiciled here to vote. ...When I asked him what I needed
to do to be legally domiciled, he said I had to have a Virginia
driver's license and have my car registered here.

"That just didn't seem right to me - that that would be a requirement
to register to vote here."

Andrews said Zell misunderstood him: He said he told the student that
it would have been easier for her to register to vote at the DMV when
she got her Virginia driver's license.

Andrews said Zell told him that she still had an Indiana license. He
said he then told her that "when you move to Virginia, you're supposed
to change your license because that's state law."

Andrews said, "I wasn't saying that was a requisite for voter
registration. There was a slight befuddlement on her part."

Zell insisted on filling out a provisional ballot, but the city's
electoral board disqualified her vote, along with others Wednesday,
because it had no evidence that she had tried to register.

The board counted four of 17 provisional ballots filed Tuesday.

"I just cared about this process a lot," Zell said.

"It's disappointing for things not to work out."