Shawshank thesp erased from NY voter rolls

Susan Sarandon's common law hubby was miffed this morning when election officials at his local polling station couldn't find his name. "The issue is that they removed my name from the voting rolls,” Tim Robbins told The New York Times. “My name was there for the primaries.” The Academy Award-winning American film actor says …

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, El Reg!

You guys had far more detail on the story than anybody on the dirty side of the pond. Over here, magically a judge ordered he could vote, and didn't mention him going down to city hall.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess

this is the start of "this election was rigged"... unless of course, the "proper" person wins.

[Wokstation]

IF (MemberOfPublic) == UnwantedParty$

DEL VOTEREGISTER/MemberOfPublic /Y

[James Prior]

He can't do math though ..

Voting at this station since 1997 .. that's 11 years not 15.

[Ed Blackshaw]

So let me get this right...

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like he was registered to vote twice, with different addresses. Election officials spotted this so they deleted the registrations. Sounds to me like they're trying to _prevent_ election fraud...

[garbo]

What's with the Mr Sarandon?

Does the "author" think that de facto male partners take the female's surname? Or is the ignoramus suggesting that Tim Robbins, academy award winning actor, director, is less well known than his female partner? Just give the facts & let the readers work it out.

Who is this goose?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote early and often

With two registrations, Robbins was only following the maxim.

[andy gibson]

"Nothing to Lose"

It's a great film, especially the spider scene and when he catches fire!

[James Farrell]

maths

Hang on, am I missing something here?

'...he's been voting at same New York City polling station since 1997 - "The poll workers here know me," he said. “I’ve been voting here 15 years.”'

15 years ago is not 1997... unless he works in special Hollyweird maths?

[Gis Bun]

Can't vote

There was a recent snafu where many found themselves off the lists. According to a law, nobody can be removed within 90 days of an election, but they were....

[Dave Turner]

His audidtion failed

Poor Tim. He went to an audition and didn't get the part because his candidate won. Boo hoo.

[Connor Garvey]

Correction

"Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like he was registered to vote twice, with different addresses. Election officials spotted this so they deleted the registrations. Sounds to me like they're trying to _prevent_ election fraud..."

Ok.

It's illegal to remove a citizen from the voting roll without notification. It's the state(s)' job to ensure that when a person changes addresses, the old registration is invalidated. It's not Mr. Robbins' fault that he was registered twice. It's also not his fault that he wasn't notified that he was removed before election day. It's disgraceful that the people in charge of elections don't understand election laws and err on the side of caution at the expense of free and fair elections.

What's more interesting is that there isn't any evidence of an election being decided by multiple voting, but there is loads of evidence of elections being decided by voter disenfranchisement. One person voting twice or three times has a far smaller effect than one election official removing 20,000 people from voting rolls.