Voter Registration: Easy to register not so easy to get off the list

Voting is always an interesting experience. If you are like me, you rather go to a polling place in May instead of November just because the weather is usually warmer and if you have to wait outside in a line it is usually a better and easier experience well except for days when it is pouring like yesterday. Once you get inside and you follow all the instructions and show your identification you are allowed to go in and privately make your selections.

Showing identification is no problem for me and usually I don't think anything of it until I happen to look down and caught the couple names before me and after me. The name before me happened to be a family member who passed over 8 years ago. I asked the volunteers at the polling place about it and how to get it off the list. One of the volunteers gave me a form to complete and mail into the Voter's Registration Center in Media requesting that the name of the deceased be removed.

I found it so interesting that the name has been on the list for the last 8 years. Just sitting there, probably many a volunteer seeing it and thinking, I guess this person doesn't choose to exercise his or her right to vote, what a shame.

So it made me wonder, does any government agency and now that I have the form, the Voter Registration Agency ever check their lists with the postal office to see if people moved out of that polling area or with the census bureau or with the state tax records or in my case, the death records in the county? Seeing that name on the list and it has probably been there for eight years made me wonder, is my name on list for the other polling places in boroughs or townships that I once lived in? Is my name on five or six lists in Delaware County? How is the list compiled is it by driver's license or is it by the voter registration cards only. Over the last couple years I moved from one borough to a township and I changed my voter registration but I just wonder if I had not, would I still be on the old list in the old borough?

I guess it is just another question for the ages but the bottom line is, if you too have a loved one who passed, might he or she still be on the list in that borough or township? And if so, will the person every be purged from the list without you sending in the form to the voter registration center?

Lastly, why am I having to ask all these questions in the year 2010 when I get any information I want about anything pretty much on my blackberry but the government can't take my loved one off a list for 8 years?

Just something to think about the next time you go to vote.