Secretary of State Rokita helps teach
youth from Hoosier Girls State about Indiana government.
Secretary of State Todd Rokita has been busy travelling Indiana the last two weeks with stops in Allen, Bartholomew, Boone, Clark, Elkhart, Harrison, Lake, Tippecanoe, Vanderburgh, Vigo, and Wayne counties. Last week, Rokita spoke to the state County Clerks' conference and spent time there with local officials.
Voter Rolls
Indiana’s bloated voter rolls are easily visible because of the successful implementation of the new Statewide Voter Registration System. Secretary of State Todd Rokita’s plan would implement a comprehensive mailing that would significantly reduce the number of duplicate and other inaccurate registrations. With pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice, Rokita’s plan to clean up voter rolls has been agreed upon by state Democrats. "When we determined that 19 of 92 Indiana counties have more registered voters than actual citizens, age 18 or older, we knew there was a problem" said Rokita. "When our brand new statewide voter registration system found 290,522 possible duplicate records, we knew there was a problem."
"Massive Voter-Record Cleanup Planned" - The Indianapolis Star - June 23, 2006
"Editorial: Rokita’s voter purge plan is reasonable and necessary" – Bloomington Herald Times – June 18, 2006
Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a Republican, is running into flak from some quarters about his proposal for a statewide purge of voters. His goals are legitimate.
The need for this is pretty indisputable. When 19 of 92 Indiana counties have more registered voters than there are citizens 18 or older, there's a problem. And when the state registered voter system has detected 290,522 possible duplications, there's a problem.
The main responsibility for this lies with the 1993 Congress, which passed the federal "Motor Voter" law that made it easier to register but also made it very difficult to remove departed voters from a county's voter rolls.
Rokita wants to eliminate cases where voters who have moved are registered in two or more places. He also wants to get as many dead people as possible off the voter rolls. How does anyone object to either? But aside from the intrinsically desirable goal of having accurate voter lists, there are two very good reasons for periodic voter purges.
First is voter fraud. Multiple registrations of individual voters in different localities permits those voters, if they want to make the effort, to show up wherever they're registered to vote. And before the voter photo ID requirement, which also has received flak, it was possible for somebody to show up to vote in the place of a dead voter.
The second is that not removing relocated or deceased voters lets voter rolls grow and grow, which requires creating more and more precincts that require more and more expensive voting machines and more and more harder-and-harder-to-find election workers. And all for voters who aren't even there anymore and who are artificially inflating the registered-voter total.
If you think it's not a big deal, consider that Monroe County Clerk Jim Fielder has determined from a voter-notification effort in 2004 that Monroe has more than 46,000 "inactive" voters, the vast majority of whom aren't here anymore. That's more than two of every five Monroe County registered voters. Monroe started its own process with that 2004 survey and Fielder expects that when those names are purged after this year's election, the county will be able to cut its precinct total from 96 to 75.
Rokita's plan has a methodical two- to three-year process for giving merely inactive voters two notices and plenty of opportunity to let election officials know they're alive and well, still there and want to stay on the rolls.
Every voter in the state gets a mailed notice. If it is returned undeliverable, a second notice is sent. If there's no return again, the voter is placed on an "inactive" list. He or she can "reactivate" their status merely by voting in any of the 2006, 2007 or 2008 primaries or elections. If they don't, they'll be removed from the rolls.
There is nothing we can see that is arbitrary, capricious, unreasonable or onerous about this. The plan should be implemented.
Indiana Investment Watch
Just days after the second wave of the Indiana Investment Watch campaign began, a victim came forward that could help break open a case that had been on hold since February. The educational campaign that instructs Hoosiers to be aware of the dangers of unscrupulous mortgage brokers and other investments blunders has become invaluable in the short time the ads have been running. The awareness campaign will continue with hopes that more victims will come forward and more fraudulent loan and mortgage brokers will be put to justice."Indianapolis Mortgage Broker Scam" - WISH-TV - June 12, 2006
The Business Services Division of Secretary of State Todd
Rokita’s Office is currently undergoing a scanning project of all active
corporate documents. The division will have
scanned over 5 million corporate documents by this fall. Once the project is completed, all
of these documents will be available online for printing directly from a user's desktop.
At the age of 36, Secretary Rokita is the second youngest Secretary of State in the country. First elected to the third highest office in state government in 2002, Secretary Rokita served for a year as the youngest Secretary of State in the nation. More information about Todd Rokita can be found on his biography page:
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