Last week, numerous news outlets, national and local, reported on a huge increase in registered voters in Ferguson, Mo., following the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown. But it apparently didn’t actually happen. The St. Louis County elections board reported that 3,287 Ferguson residents had registered to vote. That is a huge surge for a city of 21,000, particularly as controversy swelled about the racial make-up of the city government after the shooting. Ferguson is two-thirds African-American, but its mayor and all but one member of the six-person city council are white. But apparently that first report was in error. There was no voter registration spike. The county elections board reversed course on Tuesday and said that, actually, only 128 people had registered to vote since the shooting. Yamiche Alcindor of USA Today reported on the gigantic revision, attributed to an unexplained “discrepancy.”
St. Louis County director of elections Rita Heard Days told TPM in a phone interview Tuesday that the county had mistakenly used a report that records all changes to a voter’s registration information — new address, change in marital status, etc. — to get the initial 3,287 number. Somebody within the office pointed out the issue after the huge spike was reported, and the board worked with the secretary of state’s office to get the actual 128 new registrants.
Full Article: Huge Increase In Voter Registrations In Ferguson Apparently Never Happened.