The State Party Plan (section 18.3) provides that caucuses are open to registered voters. Virginia law (Va. Code section 24.2-101) provides that a "registered voter" is "any person who is maintained on the Virginia voter registration system." You don't become a "registered voter" just by filling out an application or signing a form with the local registrar; you become a registered voter when the application is accepted in Richmond and you are entered onto the computer system. That usually takes about a week from the time when you made application.

The problem is that someone who registers so close to the time of a Mass Meeting that the state hasn't had time to process the application will think that they are a "registered voter," but they aren't.

The situation is worse this year, because Virginia law also closes the voter registration rolls "during the 28 days before a primary or general election." Va. Code section 24.2-416. The Republican primary is on February 29, to the voter registration rolls closed February 1. That means that any person who applies to be a registered voter during the month of February, 2000, will not even have their application processed until March 1. Note that the Code does NOT say that the voter registration rolls remain open, but that only those registered on February 1, 2000, may participate. It says that the voter registration rolls are closed during that time.

As a legal matter, therefore, anyone who applies during the month of February should be ineligible to participate in the Mass Meeting.

Why doesn't the Party Plan permit all those who have applied to become registered voters to participate in caucuses? Because they want the same rules for caucuses as they have for primaries. If you are registered, you can participate in a caucus; if you are registered, you can participate in a primary. In fact, though, it is more inclusive to have a caucus, because there is no 28-day cutoff for registration for a caucus. In a normal year, with no Republican presidential primary closing voter lists in February, the only "cutoff" would be determined by how soon people's applications could be processed.

How can we tell if someone is a registered voter? Some Democratic parties get a printout of the voter registration list, and check people off. I remember in 1996 for the presidential mass meeting, we had the City registrar standing by at her office, ready to check the official list if there were any challenges to participants.

Why should we care? Why shouldn't we just let anyone who comes participate?

Ask the Loudoun County Democrats. They have been plagued by Lyndon LaRouche supporters for years. In fact, that was our concern in Charlottesville in 1996. In Loudoun, they get a voter registration list and check everyone off.

Couldn't we use the voter lists, plus whoever has newly registered? The problem is that when you register, you don't get any indicium of registration or application. You don't get a card until after you have been registered. Having applied to register gives you nothing.

I have spoken with Craig Bieber, Executive Director of the State Party, about this. The official suggestion of how to handle this is that the registrar of voters should be available to check the voter list at the time of the mass meeting. Craig checked it with their Rules guru, who told him that he thought that if a local committee wanted to provide for a process for accepting those who had done everything they could to be registered but just hadn't been cleared by the computer, they could. That would require having the registrar able to check some list of those who have applied but haven't yet had their applications acted on. That would still mean that everyone would have to be found on one list or another.

After debating this issue over the last few days, the Temporary Rules Committee has chosen to recommend that we simply leave it on the honor system -- if someone says they are a registered voter, we will accept that, and not try to check it. We decided on this largely for two reasons -- workability and perception. It will make it unnecessary to have a lengthy check-in procedure at the mass meeting, and we won't run the risk of turning off people who might just a few days earlier have gotten turned on to politics.

I intend to check the certifications against the voter lists at the end of April, just to get a sense of whether there were many people who swore that they were registered when they in fact were not. If it is a significant number, I will make an appropriate recommendation to the City Committee later on.

The one check that we can reasonably make, and which we have done before, is to check the addresses. It is unfortunately true in this area that on one part of the street, you can be in the City, while on another part of the street you can live in the County. New registrants may not know where they vote, and -- particularly if they are University students -- may not realize whether they live in the City or the County. It is at least counter-intuitive (if not downright illogical) that people who live on the Lawn are County residents. We will ask precinct officers to be alert to that before they hand out ballots.

We anticipate many more people at this mass meeting than we have ever had before, and we want it to go smoothly. If the cost is that we include a small percentage of people who are not properly registered, we can deal with that. If we end up with a large number of people who are not properly registered, we will need to develop other procedures. I hope that we will not have a problem on Monday night.

Lloyd Snook (electronic mail, February 17, 2000).