The Curious Case of Tim Robbins' Election Day Kerfuffle

I had noted on November 4 that Tim Robbins had problems attempting to vote in Manhattan and went through the process of going to the Board of Elections headquarters at 200 Varick Street in Manhattan to get a judge to sign off on his ability to vote at the McBurney Y.M.C.A., at 125 West 14th Street, which is where he claimed to be properly registered, and where his partner, Susan Sarandon was also registered to vote.

She had no problems voting, but his name was not on the voter roll.

Well, it turns out there was more to the story.

It may have something to do with the fact that there were two registrations for Tim Robbins in the elections database, and one of those was considered inactive.

The letter, signed by Gregory C. Soumas, the Manhattan Democratic representative on the 10-member elections board, said that Mr. Robbins’s voting problems were, in essence, his own fault.

According to state and city election records, Mr. Robbins registered to vote, under the name Tim Robbins, in November 1997, listing an address on West 15th Street, and registered a second time, under the name Timothy F. Robbins, in February 2004, listing an address on West 19th Street. The 1997 registration is now listed as inactive, while the 2004 registration is listed as active.

Mr. Soumas wrote that based on the active registration, Mr. Robbins should have gone to vote at the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, at 40 West 20th Street, not the McBurney Y.M.C.A.

“It would appear, based on a review of your voter registration history, that your voting experience was less than positive because you simply went to the wrong poll site,” Mr. Soumas wrote to Mr. Robbins. “The change in voter address was not noticed earlier because you have not voted in any recent election, including the presidential primary in February 2008 and the party primary in September 2008.”

Of course, Robbins claims that the Board is mistaken and that he had been voting at the YMCA for years. The problem is that he should have been voting at a different location based on the address information he provided to the Board.

This is yet another reason that the elections system in the country needs an overhaul and closer review of voter rolls. These problems are all too common and ensuring that the voter rolls are accurate takes time and effort that many states simply do not want to do, and whose political elites think may in some way result in disenfranchisement.

As the Times further points out to sum up the incident:

In sum, from the board’s point of view, Mr. Robbins was at fault for filing a second voter registration card, while from Mr. Robbins’s point of view, the board was at fault for suddenly purging his name from the Poll List Book at the site where he had voted, without any problems, in several previous elections — and where, according to Ms. Williamson, his name appeared as recently as the September primary.

Robbins should have been advised of the proper location to cast a ballot from the time when his address changed years earlier, and that he had been able to cast ballots at the YMCA despite actually residing in a different location shows just how archaic the system is. While this was a clerical error - whether it was Robbins' fault or the fault of the Board of Elections, someone with malicious intent could take advantage of this system to game the system.