Update: Online voter registration site is fixed

Am I registered? Call the county

It's a bad time for the Idaho Secretary of State's online voter registration verification website, www.idahovotes.gov, to be acting up.

But it is.

We've been told by Kootenai County Clerk Cliff Hayes that the signatures rejected from the recall petitions were disqualified because the signers were not on the list of registered voters living in the city of Coeur d'Alene.

So naturally, since yesterday's news that the recall effort failed to garner enough valid signatures to trigger an election, many petition signers are going online to check their voter registration statuses, and they're not finding themselves listed as registered voters.

I called Carrie Phillips, the county's elections manager, who told me the county's petition signature verification team members did not use Idaho Votes information when checking the recall petitions. The county has its own access to the statewide database.

That's good, because I know I'm a registered voter, and I am nowhere to be found on www.idahovotes.gov's database.

I called the Idaho SOS's elections office and the woman who answered the phone couldn't find me either. Then, she couldn't find herself.

I do know I am in the county's database of registered voters because Phillips looked me up, and there I was, listed as living where I do, in Hayden.

Someone at the state elections office is supposed to get back to me to discuss their site.

In the meantime, Phillips encourages anyone with questions or concerns about their voter registration status to contact the county's elections office at (208) 446-1030 or in person, 1808 N. Third St., Coeur d'Alene.

- Maureen Dolan, [email protected]