03 July 2008

Taking Names (or, more importantly, deleting them)

In an effort to do my civic duty and help cut down on waste and inefficiency at the Town Clerk's Office of Brattleboro, VT, where I used to live, I called this morning to inform the office of my recent voter registration in Denver and to make sure that my name was off the voter checklist up there in the great northern wildlands.

I've just hung up the phone, and I'm completely sketched out by how easy it was to remove my name from the list. I was not asked for a social security number or any corroborating form of identification. I wasn't even asked my old mailing address, just to help support my story. I could have been anyone, pretending to be Matthew Plavnick.

Is it really this easy to remove names from lists of registered voters?! Is this what George Bush and Karl Rove have known for years?