Officials
erred in reporting voter spike in Missouri suburb where teen was shot
Send a link to a friend
[October 09, 2014]
(Reuters) - A reported spike in
voter registration numbers in Ferguson, Missouri, since the fatal
shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer was the
result of an error by election officers, state officials said on
Wednesday.
|
The St. Louis County Board of Elections reported earlier this
month that nearly 3,300 Ferguson residents had registered to vote
between Aug. 9 and Sept. 30, in time for the Nov. 4 election.
But election commissioners ran the wrong report, said Laura
Swinford, spokeswoman for the Missouri Secretary of State's Office.
There were in fact just 128 newly registered voters in the St. Louis
suburb after the shooting through Monday, Swinford said in an email.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted an election official as saying
the discrepancy came from a check of the wrong database.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Oct/09/images/ads/current/business_directory_filler.png) Ferguson has about 21,000 residents. Wednesday is the deadline to
register to vote, Swinford said.
The shooting of Michael Brown, 18, by officer Darren Wilson on a
Ferguson street triggered weeks of sometimes violent protests. About
two-thirds of Ferguson residents are black, but its mayor and five
of six council members are white. At the time of the shooting,
police came under criticism for having only three black officers on
its 53-member force.
[to top of second column] |
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Oct/09/images/ads/current/mkspink_lda_092414.png)
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and
other groups have made efforts to get more blacks to register. Three
seats on the City Council in Ferguson are up for election in April.
(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski in Chicago; Editing by Peter Cooney)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Oct/09/images/ads/current/charrons_bch041713.png) |