The only "agent of change" Princess ever supported was the person who refreshed the water in her fishbowl. Now Lake County election officials want to investigate out how the dead goldfish received voter registration material.
Paperwork sent to a "Princess Nudelman" likely came from the "Women's Voices, Women Vote" project, said Lake County Clerk Willard Helander, a Republican, who said she has spotted problems with nearly 1,000 voter registrations this year.
"I am just stunned at the level of people compromising the integrity of the voting process," Helander said Monday. She wants to require some voters to show IDs at the polls if she finds that problems, including nonexistent addresses and questionable signatures or registrations, are clustered in certain precincts.
Beth Nudelman of Buffalo Grove, who owned the fish, said Princess may have ended up on a mailing list because the family once filled in the pet's name when they got a second phone line for a computer.
"There was no fraud involved," said Nudelman, a Democrat and supporter of presidential candidate Barack Obama. "This person is a dead fish."
In August, Women's Voices, Women Vote sent nearly 1 million mailings to Illinois households using a list that mistakenly included some pets, said Sarah Johnson, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit Washington, D.C.-based group that seeks to encourage more voting among single women.
The mailing list, purchased from a commercial vendor, included names from warranties, magazine subscriptions and other sources where people may have filled in a pet's name, Johnson said. The group attempted to screen out the obvious ones.
"Fido's not going to be left on there, but if a cat is named is Polly, she may be," Johnson said. Princess could be a person's name, she insisted. "I went to high school with two Princesses."
Nudelman said the only address on the registration card was the Lake County clerk's office. She said she wrote election officials a humorous note explaining why the fish was ineligible to vote that began "We regret to inform you ..."
The Illinois mailing generated 63,500 returned voter applications, Johnson said. Applicants were instructed to fill in a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number so election officials would be able to validate their identification.
"We obviously don't want to add more work for any election official," Johnson said. "At the end of the day, our goal is same as theirs: To give as many people as possible the chance to make voices heard in our democracy."
Steve Sturm, legal counsel for the Illinois State Board of Elections, said the mailing generated numerous complaints from residents "throughout the state, from Cairo all the way to Chicago."
Helander said she knows such crackdowns have been criticized by activist groups as disguised efforts to discourage turnout, but she said "it would help us determine that we are having a fair election."
Lake County election officials contacted Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office Monday afternoon, said spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler.
The Lake County sheriff's office and the Lake County state's attorney's office were "already working on it" and were the appropriate agencies to investigate, Ziegler said.
"If they need or want our assistance we would be happy to help," she said.
In the final weeks before Nov. 4 election, the McCain-Palin campaign has raised questions about voter registration practices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN is accused of submitting false voter registration forms for some of the 1.3 million young people, minorities, and poor and working-class voters it has registered. The FBI has joined nearly a dozen states in investigating.
Women's Voices has worked with ACORN in the past, but the August mailing "has nothing to do with" ACORN, Johnson said.
--Associated Press
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