Though he tried, college student won’t get to vote

Absentee ballot from Doña Ana County never arrived at 20-year-old’s residence in Washington, D.C.

Philip Zakahi is a 20-year-old college student living in Washington, D.C. who has voted in every election since he was old enough and had hoped to vote for Barack Obama this year.

Instead, Zakahi, a student at American University, is going to have to deal with the disappointment of not being able to vote in this election.

Zakahi is one of an unknown number of people who is registered to vote in Doña Ana County but won’t be able to vote because they never received the absentee ballots they requested. The county said this morning that 3,844 people who had requested absentee ballots hadn’t yet voted, and the fear is that, when the dust settles on this election, hundreds or even thousands of them may have been disenfranchised.

The problem is at least in part attributable to the fact that the county didn’t comply with a law requiring that absentee ballots be mailed out within 24 hours of the office receiving requests for the ballots. There’s been widespread concern about the county’s vote since that problem was discovered on Friday.

While officials have emphasized alternatives to absentee voting for those who haven’t received their ballots, Zakahi is one for whom no other option exists. While military personnel stationed inside the United States, and anyone who is overseas, can request that a ballot be faxed or e-mailed to them as late as today and still be able to vote, no such provision exists for non-military members inside the United States.

“In all honesty, my biggest worry is that there may be a close race where my vote would have made a large impact,” said Zakahi, who specifically mentioned the state Senate race between Leonard Lee Rawson, R-Las Cruces, and Democratic challenger Steve Fischmann.

Zakahi, 20 and a Democrat, voted in the 2006 general election and in every smaller election since. He’s an active local politico who was finance director for Bill McCamley’s 2nd Congressional District campaign earlier this year.

He said he requested an application for an absentee ballot at the end of September. He received the application and returned it the first week of October. Zakahi became concerned when his ballot hadn’t arrived days later, as it should have, and he called the county Bureau of Elections to check on its status.

Zakahi said he was told his application had been received and his ballot should have been mailed out the next day. A week later, he still hadn’t received it.

“For almost a week, my calls were never answered, and I never heard back when I left messages,” Zakahi said.

On Thursday, someone finally answered the phone when Zakahi called. The worker said she was surprised that his ballot had not been sent out and she would check on it. She called back to say that his application was “being processed right now.”

As of today, Zakahi said, the ballot still hasn’t arrived at his Washington residence.