September 29, 2003 10:51 AM

Broken: Voter registration form

Peter Steinberg writes:

Here's a voter registration form for New York State. The headings on the instructions say...

"You can use this form to:"

"To register you must:"

"To complete this form:"

"Deadline information:"

"Need more registration forms?"

"Questions?"

But nowhere on the form, absolutely NOWHERE does it tell what to do when you COMPLETE the form... nowhere to mail it. Nowhere to carry it in person. I suppose you're just supposed to fill it out and they use ESP to read your information off of it.

Update: David B. writes in from New York City: "While I think the American electoral process is broken (low voter turnout, overly partisan, special interest driven, etc.), the comments on the voter reg form miss the boat. NY State voter reg forms are mailers... the flip side of where the voter writes their info is Business Reply Mail pre-addressed to their local Board of Elections (or in a minority of forms, with blank address lines that refer to a chart that has all the county Boards' addresses)."

Second Update: Peter Steinberg writes back:

I don't think I missed the boat at all... while this form may have a pre-addressed envelope on the flip side of it, I wouldn't know. I downloaded it as a PDF from the NY State Board of Elections website. Ultimately, returning to the site led me to a page where I could look up the address I needed, but a lot of good that did me after I already downloaded the PDF, printed it, logged off, and shut down my computer.