New York Times, Dwyer, Get Rock the Vote Registration Story Massively Wrong

Update: I'm hearing now that Dwyer has finally returned RTV's phone calls about this. More as I hear about it.
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Yesterday I posted about a New York Times story claiming that, due to an error on the part of Rock the Vote, upwards of 100,000 registrations made in NYC via their voter registration widget were incorrect and would potentially not go through by election day. In talking to Rock the Vote, it looks like Jim Dwyer, the reporter for the Times, got the story massively wrong.

Dwyer claimed that Rock the Vote was improperly directing all of their voter registration forms to the state Board of Elections, rather than the local boards for each borough of New York. Heather Smith, the Executive Director of Rock the Vote, informed me that this is inaccurate. Rock the Vote is using the National Voter Registration Application, a federal form accepted by 47 states - including New York State - and the District of Columbia. Here's how Heather explains the process (emphasis mine):

In the instructions, the EAC provides a single address for each state, generally the Secretary of State or the State Board of Elections. The EAC instructs applicants to mail the application to the address provided, or to deliver the application in person to the local voter registration office.

So bottom line is that we are using a form published by the federal government. Whether someone downloads the PDF from the EAC website or uses the RTV tool to complete and print it, it would be mailed to the NYS Board of Elections and processed by whatever mechanism the state of New York has set up.

In my post from yesterday, I noted that the proper address for the Board of elections is something that should have been double and triple-checked by Rock the Vote. Well, turns out that it was. Twice in the last year, most recently in July, a Rock the Vote staffer confirmed with the New York State Board of Elections that the address on their voter registration forms was accurate. Rock the Vote has now published those emails.

Of course, being right doesn't help any of the young voters whose registrations are in jeopardy. Rock the Vote is now working to make sure that affected voters get their registrations processed in time for the election. An email sent out earlier tonight by Rock the Vote contained the following:

We’re taking action on this immediately. We’re correcting the story, but more importantly we’re working with attorneys, impacted young people, election experts, and the Board of Elections to make sure every single eligible person who mailed a registration application to the NYS Board of Elections is properly registered and able to vote on Tuesday November 4th.

Record numbers of people are registering to vote this year. That is an incredibly wonderful thing for our democracy. Politicians should be praising this, but instead they seem to be shirking responsibility. Sadly, this appears to be yet another example of our broken election administration system.

If you downloaded and mailed in a registration form from New York, check their registration status TODAY and report problems to vote [at] rockthevote [dot] com. Please spread the word.

And remember - anyone in any state can find out how to check their registration at www.CanIVote.org. Encourage everyone you know to do so and to report any problems to us or by calling 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

Stay tuned - we'll be in touch in the next 48 hours with additional actions we’ll be taking.

Now, we can all debate about the wisdom of using the NVRA instead of local applications in light of the screw ups by the New York State Board of Elections (and surely other Boards of Elections across the country, for one problem or another) - and we probably should have this discussion after November as we assess the utility of new tools like the RTV/Credo Widget, and work to make our programs better. But at the moment, the fault does indeed seem to lay with the New York State Board of Elections, and faulty reporting on the part of Jim Dwyer of the New York Times. It seemd Dwyer did not adequately fact check any of this, and, according to Rock the Vote staffers, did not make a good faith effort in his reporting. It should also be noted that, as of this writing, Dwyer has not returned any calls from Rock the Vote about the inaccuracies in his piece.