[link|http://www.sos.arkansas.gov/elections_voter_arkansas_absentee.html|Arkansas voting rules]:
To Apply to Register to Vote in Arkansas :
* You must be a U.S. citizen and an Arkansas resident 30 days prior to an election.
* You must be age 18 before the next election within the county.
* You must not presently be adjudged mentally incompetent by a court of competent jurisdiction.
* You must not have been convicted of a felony without your sentence having been discharged or pardoned.
* You must not claim the right to vote in another county or state.
Someone who is 17 but will be 18 the day of the election is entitled to register to vote (assuming they meet the other requirements), and entitled to vote on election day.
[link|http://projectvote.org/fileadmin/ProjectVote/pdfs/States_of_Disarray1.pdf|States of Disarray] (10 page .pdf):
Challenges for Future Elections [in Arkansas]
Election administration offices rejected the applications of new voters who would turn 18 by the Presidential Election, but after an intervening local election. Some of these rejected voters received
blank applications with their rejection notices, instructing the voters to submit the application after their 18th birthday, but federal law requires only that people be 18 on election day. Requiring young voters to submit duplicate applications leaves more room for error and is an additional administrative barrier to maximizing their opportunity to vote. Proper administrative systems should be able to
remedy these problems so that new voters aren\ufffdt required to submit duplicate applications.
If people were told they had to be 18 to register, they were given incorrect information. Mistakes like this shouldn't happen. They should have been told that they needed to register after the local election day if they would turn 18 after that day. Even if there's no possibility of two forms causing errors or confusion, the election officials should always give people correct information.
One of the purposes of the national HAVA act was to minimize problems like these. There doesn't have to be nefarious intent for there to be problems that should be remedied.
The PDF goes into more details on the problems they found in other states. It's not simply a matter of "do the right thing and you're OK". Some people apparently were never told the proper way to fill out the forms or were never given the opportunity to correct the forms and thus were later denied their right to vote.
Of course, there will always be problems. But we should be able to come up with ways to give everyone the legal franchise and not have 10s of thousands of people excluded for reasons like these.
Cheers,
Scott.
call bs on these points
