Voter registration cards in the mail
By BARRY HALVORSON bhalvorson@journal-spectator.com

Staff photo by Barry Halvorson A clear picture of how many people need to check on their voter registration, Wharton County Elections Administrator Judy Owens shows off drawers of voter information that has been suspended for lack of an accurate address. The upper drawer represents election information from 2004 that will be taken out of the system after the upcoming November general election if not updated. Those with cards in the lower drawer still have two years to get their information updated.

Wharton County's residents and registered voters will soon receive proof of their voter status as new voter registration cards start arriving in the mail.

Wharton County Elections Official Judy Owens said her office hoped to have the information for the cards compiled yesterday and places to send it to a vendor to prepare this coming week. Once the cards are ready they'll be mailed out.

"People should start receiving their renewals in two to three weeks," she said. "If you haven't received your new card by around Jan. 10, you can contact my office and we'll start looking into it."

Owens said that once a person is registered, they remain registered unless they change addresses and their card is returned to the county's election office.

She added a person's address can change for reasons other than moving.

"That means any change of address," she said.

"At the end of 2005 in the East Bernard area, hundreds of cards were kicked back because of the city's incorporation. It was my first indoctrination of getting hundreds of cards back. And with the county re-designating roads and streets for the 9-1-1 system, some official addresses are going to change, meaning returned cards.

"I don't know how many will come back but we'll find out shortly," Owens said. "I know they are doing a lot of work in the El Campo and Louise areas and if those cards are returned, we can't update off the forwarding address."

Owens explained that because registration cards are considered a federal document, they can't use a return address to issue the cards.

Instead, she has to send out a letter requesting the voter report the change of address.

"We have to have an actual signature," she said. "That's how the system operates."

If a person doesn't submit the change of address information, Owens said those files are "flagged" and the voter is put in "suspense" and cannot participate in any elections.

If they are in suspense more than four years - two full, two-year election cycles - they are removed from the voter rolls.

One way Owens is able to regularly update when a voter moves is through the Texas Election Administration Management system, or TEAM. For those participating counties, including Wharton, if a person moves and files for a new voter registration card, a message is sent out to the TEAM counties to delete that file from their own records.

Since beginning to update local records, Owens said some people will find out they've been voting at the wrong box, depending on if it is a county, city, school or other election.

"We're expecting some resistance with people telling us they've been voting in one location 'for years.'" she said.

"And they would be right. But we went to the Tax Assessor-Collector's office (which previously handled voter registration), got the actual boundaries and have gone through precinct by precinct to determine actual voting status.

"Someone might say their neighbor across the road votes where they vote and why do they have to change. Well, along some boundaries, the actual line runs down the middle of the road."

Maintaining the registration records can be quite a challenge. Owens has to track the voting box boundaries for the county, all five school districts and each of the county's three cities along with the West Wharton County Hospital District, Isaacson Municipal Utility District, the three water districts, the groundwater conservation district and Wharton County Junior College.

Owens said there are about 24,000 registered voters in the county and keeping track of all those individuals can be a challenge.

While on the books as a one-person department, Owens does have part-time assistance in Sharon Martin.

Martin's temporary position is funded with Chapter 19 money, a state program providing additional funds for voter registration.

But the average citizen can assist as well. If you are unsure of your voter status, you can check it out on the Internet at the Texas Secretary of State's Web site at www. sos/state/tx/us and click on voter information.

If the information contained is inaccurate, you can download a registration form, then mail or hand deliver it to the elections office, located in the Wharton County Annex building in Wharton.

"You can't do it online because we need that signature."

She added that those with family members who are out of the country, particularly those serving in the military overseas, need to remind their loved ones they have to register as well.

"The last general election we mailed out 80 ballots and only 15 were returned," she said.

"And at least some of those were because the person had changed duty stations. Those in the military can register with a federal postcard application."

The cost of voter registration can be substantial, even for a county with a population as relatively small as Wharton County's.

"The initial cost of printing the cards is $6,000 when you include postage," she said.

"For each one returned, we have to send out the letter and postage on that is 41 cents each, and if they are returned and signed, then we have to generate a new card and mail it out at a cost of 26 cents per card. And that doesn't include the man-hours involved in processing the information. So if you can contact us directly with a change, it can save time and money."

She said letting the election office know when a family member has died can also help streamline the process, reduce the cost and make sure files are up to date.

"I heard of one case in another county where the jury wheel (which combines voter registration and driver's license lists to generate jury pools) turned up a name for someone who had been deceased for nine years.

"No one ever reported the death and the information was still correct, so it stayed on file."