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Woman thought DPS site would register her to vote
Several McCain supporters said they thought they had registered to vote when they got a new driver’s license — but election workers told them they were not on the rolls.
“The only thing that they told me I could do is re-register and not vote today,” Tammy Baker, 35, of Venus said Tuesday.
Baker said she clicked on a box to register to vote when she applied online for a new driver’s license about a year ago.
She said she was applying for a new driver’s license because her address changed when she moved from Arlington to Venus, in Johnson County.
But it appears she did not do enough.
Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange said people who register to vote online must print out a form, sign it and mail it to the Texas Secretary of State.
Baker, who wanted to vote for Republican John McCain for president, said she did not see anything telling her to do that.
“It just said click here to register to vote,” she said. “It’s pretty misleading. It’s pretty confusing.”
Randall Dillard, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, said all voter registrations must, by law, have a signature. He said his office will contact the DPS to try to make the process easier.
“If there’s one person that’s confused, that’s too many, so we’ll continue to work with DPS,” he said.
Dennis McClure, 54, of Keller, said he had the same problem Baker did.
He said he clicked “yes” to register to vote when he was changing his driver’s license a few months ago, but did not remember seeing anything about printing something out to sign.
So McClure was given a provisional ballot when he went to cast an early vote on Friday.
“The guy just told me ... it’s possible that my vote could be challenged and not allowed,” he said.
Jody Lindstrom, 33, of Keller, who moved to Tarrant County from Alaska, said she registered to vote in person at a county subcourthouse when she applied for a new driver’s license in early September.
She never got a voter registration card, even though her husband got one using the same process.
Lindstrom, also a McCain supporter, looked on a government Web site and found she was not registered. She said talking to election workers on the phone just confirmed that she was not registered.
“They told me I wasn’t going to be allowed to (vote) because it was past the date” to register, she said. “They said I could go and vote, but that it would not count.”
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