THE STANDARD M I S S O U R I S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y
VOLUME 112, ISSUE 12 | THE-STANDARD.ORG The Standard/The Standard Sports
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2018
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Registration mishap leaves voters stranded on Election Day EMILY COLE News Editor @EMCole19
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Volunteers from Central High School’s Student Council work together to package Toms shoes. Convoy of Hope has volunteer opportunities every Tuesday night from 6:30-8:30 for all those who need volunteer service hours.
From Missouri to Florida Local charity organizations aid in natural disaster relief after hurricanes on East Coast DEREK SHORE Staff Reporter @D_Shore23 Two disaster relief groups around Springfield have made a huge impact helping those affected by natural disaster, especially over the last few months. The local American Red Cross and Springfield-based Convoy of Hope still have teams in North Carolina and Florida following Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael. “We’re still going strong on the relief efforts in North Carolina and Florida,” Springfield’s Convoy of Hope spokesman Jeff Nene said. “It is starting to slow down, but the slowdown is mainly in the larger community. Many of the rural communities are without power and still in need of product and that sort of thing.” Both nonprofit organizations are in the business of helping people get through one of the worst times of their lives. They’re always closely monitoring the weather and daily fires to determine where they are needed the most, according to Jenny Solomon, disaster program specialist for American Red Cross of Southern Missouri. “We also work in all of the communities — Greene County and all of our other counties in the state — with preparedness,” Solomon said. “We work with the local emergency management and all of the other nonprofits to coordinate pre-
paredness in the event of any kind of disasters.” Nene said Convoy of Hope has distributed well over 100 tractor-trailer loads of food, water, hygiene products and emergency supplies to those affected in Florida. Nene said early in the disaster relief efforts the main focus for Convoy of Hope was to provide immediate food and water, especially since the majority of people will lose their water in the initial days after a disaster. Convoy has also established a main distribution hub, including a drive-thru site that has been set up at Rivertown Community Church in Marianna, Florida. “We can do that in 10 to 15 different locations all at once and we can help even more people,” Nene said. “That is one of the reasons we have been able to get the numbers up is because of that distribution method which we started.” Solomon said working daily fires depends entirely on the situation. The local American Red Cross most often gets contacted by the local fire departments via the dispatch when the family affected by the fire is in need of assistance. Then they send a responder to the scene. “We have volunteers that do what we call Disaster Action Team,” Solomon said. “They are trained volunteers that go to the scene of the fire. We try to get there before the fire department leaves so that we can assist the family. We
provide immediate assistance on the scene for the clients, depending on their needs.” Solomon said the American Red Cross also provides a prepaid debit card that has funding for essential emergency needs such as housing, emergency food or clothing, so they can go right from the scene to a hotel for lodging or the store to regain what they lost from fire damage. Disaster is a constant in the relief effort line of work, which Nene said can stretch his team thin at times. “Last fall, we had three hurricanes going at once —Harvey, Irma and Maria,” Nene said. “The response was ongoing for all three of those at the same time. We were really spread out. I mean, we had Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands along with a few
smaller islands.” According to Solomon, the local American Red Cross has sent volunteers from the Springfield area to 13 different disasters throughout the world – including three in Greene County. “The biggest thing we do is community presence in the time of their greatest need,” Solomon said. “We worked with the Emergency Management to make sure all of us know each other, and when there is something that goes on, we connect with each other. We have our certain expertise that we deal with. “That way it works more smoothly with the communities and we can get our people safe as quick as possible.” While the disasters in Florida u See RELIEF, page 10
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Volunteers at Convoy of Hope bag cereals to be donated to the community.
Several Missouri State students and dozens more Greene County voters were kept from the polls on Nov. 6 because of incorrect information on their voter registration cards. A social media post by one MSU student stated that some members of the Missouri State NAACP chapter were unable to vote after turning in their voter registration cards to the organization. The post claimed that the NAACP had not turned in the cards. The student who made the post declined to be interviewed. But, Cheryl Clay, the president of the Springfield branch of the NAACP, said that claim is not true. The issue, Clay said, was not that the cards weren’t turned in — it’s that they were filled out incorrectly. A common issue was missing apartment numbers in addresses. “For instance, if they lived in the Aspen (Heights) apartments — and those I know for a fact were all returned — they did not put an apartment number on there,” Clay said. “So they were returned. I called the Aspen and the Aspen said ‘Well, we know what apartment they were in, we would have delivered it,’ but the post office knew that they needed an apartment number to be delivered. They just stamped them undeliverable and returned them.” Green County Clerk Shane Schoeller said the cards were returned by the post office based on a law that states: “If such notice is returned as undeliverable by the postal service within the time established by the election authority, the election authority shall not place the applicant’s name on the voter registration file.” This means that if a voter registration has an incorrect address that can’t be validated by the United States Postal Service, the applicant cannot be placed on the voter registration file. “This means no voter was removed or purged from the voter registration file as some have concluded, as they can only be added once the address on the application is validated as the residence of that individual,” Schoeller said. The voter cards were returned to the Greene County Clerk’s office, Clay said. At least six cards of NAACP members were returned to students, but only three of them were corrected and re-sent in time. Clay said she tried to review the cards to make sure they were correct before they were sent in, but it is possible she may not have realized some of them needed apartment numbers. But, she said she heard from other organizations that this happened to their members as well. Clay mentioned the Missouri State College Democrats as one of those organizations. Skyler Johnston, the executive director of the Greene County Democrats, said the organization received reports of dozens of people who were unable to vote because of incorrect addresses on their registration. Johnston said the biggest issue is that those voters were often not offered provisional ballots like they should have been. “It’s my understanding that they
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