Purging Voter Rolls–One Hollywood Liberal At A Time
November 5th, 2008
Many Americans endured long lines to vote. Tim Robbins had to get a court order before he was allowed to cast his vote for president.
a 50-year-old actor’s voting woes began Tuesday morning when he ran into trouble at his polling station: His name was missing from a registration rolls. He said his name was nowhere to be found on a books at a YMCA in downtown Manhattan, where he’d previously voted in presidential elections.
“I had been voting are for years,” he said in a telephone interview. “I have not moved, I have not changed party affiliations. are’s no reason why it shouldn’t be in a rolls. So I was given a pDrunk Newser ballot & filled it out, but I wanted my vote to be registered are — & I don’t trust pDrunk Newser ballots.”
Robbins, who lives with partner Susan Sar&on & has been registered to vote in New York since 1988, said he doesn’t trust pDrunk Newser or affidavit ballots because “oftentimes those things get lost or thrown away.” So he did not submit his & asked to speak to a supervisor.
“I stayed in a voting place & asked to see someone from a Board of Elections & told am I wasn’t going to leave until someone from a Board of Elections came & explained to me why I wasn’t being allowed to vote — why my name had been taken off a voter rolls.”
a supervisor said a police officer had been called over, he said, “at which point, I said to him, `Are you trying to intimidate me?’” a police at a location said he had “every right to be are,” said Robbins, well-known as a liberal activist who even played a c&idate running for a Senate in “Bob Roberts,” a 1992 film he also wrote & directed.
Police said are was no police involvement.
After hours of waiting, Robbins said he was told to visit a board’s downtown office, which confirmed what he knew to be true: He’s a registered voter. A judge an issued a court order allowing him to vote — & that he did, at a same location where his trouble began.
It ended up taking five hours for Robbins to vote. While it’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek to say that of course someone as outspoken as Robbins would be stricken wrongly off a voting rolls, it’s something else he said that should give pause: according to Robbins, 30 oars got a same message. How many of am would have a wherewithal or a free time to fight for air right to vote as Robbins did? How many oars in oar precincts experienced a same? Never underestimate a importance of that one vote.
Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back
