After the past three elections, the Leavenworth County Clerk's office fielded complaints from would-be voters who thought they had changed their registration online.
Instead, they learned on Election Day they weren't listed on the rolls at their local polling station. Many wound up voting on a provisional ballot, which may or may not be counted in the final official tally.
"We don't know what the problem is," County Clerk Linda Scheer said. "We process all the cards we get in."
But it's happening all over Kansas.
And state election officials aren't sure why submitting an electronic change-of-address form at the Department of Motor Vehicles' Web site doesn't always result in a change of information at the polls.
They say there are several steps in the process that could go wrong. And they're hoping new processes will help eliminate problems as Monday's registration deadline for the April general election approaches.
Changes weekly
Since May 2000, the DMV's Web site has allowed voters to change their registration information at the same time as they change their driver's license address. It's part of the "motor voter" law that went into effect in 1994.
Advanced voting began this week for the April 3 election, and advance ballots can be cast during business hours at the courthouse until noon, April 2.
For more information, call 832-5267.
About 145 people in Kansas change their address online per week, said Department of Revenue spokesman Scott Holeman. In Douglas County, between five and 10 such changes are processed weekly, said Jo Dalquest, deputy county clerk.
Holeman, Dalquest and Brad Bryant, state election director, said they heard complaints about address changes not being processed after the November election. Fewer complaints were heard after last month's primary elections.
While thorny for a few unlucky voters, the problems didn't much seem to surprise the officials.
"So many people are collecting voter registrations with the new laws," Bryant said. "There's more people handling the information, so there's liable to be a few mistakes."
Possible problems
For the past nine months, the process has worked like this: The voter fills in the change-of-address form. Once a week, the DMV's computer collects the forms and prints them out.
The forms then are sent to county clerks in the counties where the voters have moved. Workers in the clerks' offices enter the data into their voter registration system.
Bryant said one possible problem with the process lies with the voter himself. The change will only be processed if the voter fills in all of the information on the online form. Although an error message should appear if that happens, the voter could click the "submit" button and not notice the error, Bryant said.
Next, DMV workers could have sent the address change to the wrong county clerk's office. That leaves workers in clerks' offices scrambling to find the voter's real home county.
"The county clerks are pretty good about sending them to the correct place," said Jefferson County Clerk Linda Buttron, whose office receives two or three incorrect forms each month.
And Bryant said the change of address like other data could be entered incorrectly into county computers.
"There could be human error," he said. "The information is sent to county election offices and it could be done wrong."
Recent changes
Starting late last month, the DMV began e-mailing registration changes instead of sending them through the postal service. Holeman said e-mail could cut down on the time between a form being submitted and the address being changed at the county clerk's office. Now, it can take as long as two weeks for the process to be completed.
Douglas County's Dalquest said she thought the e-mail also would eliminate some of the inconsistencies with the system.
"I think this will probably improve it rather than them having to mail it out to all of the counties," she said. "They're less apt to let someone fall through the cracks. ... It's taking one step out."
But Franklin County Clerk Shari Perry said she didn't know if the new system would eliminate the problems. Since her office needs documentation that it received the change of address, she said workers still have to print the e-mails.
"You're still taking stuff from one document and putting it into our system," she said, "so there's still a possibility of error."
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