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."