The Mecklenburg County Board of Elections might need to revamp its entire voter registration database because hundreds, possibly thousands, of voters could be illegally registered. In at least one case, more than 300 people – at least 50 of which voted in last November’s election – are registered listing their residence at 945 N. College St., The Urban Ministry Center.

The Ministry Center is an on-site assistance facility that provides basic necessities like meals, restrooms, showers, mail drops, and phone services for the homeless. What it doesn’t provide, however, is a place of residence. So how can more than 300 people – voters – be registered at the Urban Ministry Center in the election board’s database?

That’s what County Commissioner Bill James wants to know.

“A mail drop is not an address for establishing residence,” James said. “These 300 or so people who are registered at Urban Ministry don’t have any physical address, and I don’t think there’s any justification under North Carolina law for that to allow them to legally register.”

State statutes define residence as that place “in which that person’s habitation is fixed, and to which, whenever that person is absent, has intention of returning.” James contends that because Urban Ministry is not considered, by its own definition, as a place of residence, any voters registered there should be removed from the elections board’s voter registration lists. He has filed a complaint with the elections board asking for an investigation of the registrations, as well as the 50 people registered at Urban Ministry who voted in last year’s election.

“My suspicion is if it’s going on at this one place, if you have 300 people registered there in what’s really an office building and not a residence, it’s probably going on elsewhere across Mecklenburg County and across the state,” James said. “There’s no telling how many non-residents are registered to vote in buildings that don’t have the ability to house them.”

Even a cursory review of locations, James said, show a significant number of voter registrations that list other addresses for facilities that aren’t residences. For example, there are about 40 voters that list Charlotte Rescue Mission as a residence, even though the facility allows a maximum stay of only 135 days, James said. And the Charlotte Men’s Shelter has about 180 registered voters, some dating back to the early 1990s.

James, a Republican, said that Democrats are using places like the Urban Ministry Center as de facto voter registration clearinghouses in violation of state law. The registration numbers, at least at Urban Ministry, add credence to that suspicion. Of the 300-plus registered voters, some of which have been on the books dating from early 1998, only 15 are registered Republicans. Upwards of 50 are registered Unaffiliated; the rest are registered Democrats.

Even more interestingly are the patterns that many of the registrations follow: large bursts of activity in very short periods of time. For example, nearly all of the new voter registrations from last year were logged in concentrated clusters: 19 on Aug. 18; 16 on Sept. 15 and 16; and 36 in just the first week of October.

“I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that the Urban Ministry had all these registrations within a few brief days – this massive registration of homeless, black, Democrats,” James said. “I guess they were all so enamored with John Kerry, they just all happened to see the light and up and register at the same time.”

Even if there was some mass epiphany, James said the registrations are still in violation of state law, which requires an elections board to determine if an applicant for voter registration is qualified to vote at the address they provide.

“If the address is for an office building, like the Urban Ministry Center, then by law it cannot be a domicile or residence,” James said.

“Clearly, the individuals cannot be ‘residents’ of a precinct if they have no legal domicile of record – defined as a place of ‘habitation’ that is ‘fixed,’” James wrote in his complaint to Mecklenburg Elections Director Michael Dickerson. “A ‘fixed’ place of habitation is precinct specific and the law requires advance notice of moving and such. In some cases, these individuals at 945 North College (Urban Ministry) have voted for years. Whether they ever had a domicile or residence is a valid question.”

James requested that the local elections board conduct an audit of its database for non-residential addresses and that it purge any non-residential addresses, like the Urban Ministry Center, from its system.

Dickerson said James’ complaint and requests raise some interesting questions that are worth investigating. The elections board’s voter registration database, which includes more than half a million voters, encompasses all addresses, not just what are typically considered residential addresses.

The question, Dickerson said, is how residence is defined. That decision, he said, would ultimately have to be made by the state board of elections. He has forwarded James’ complaint to state officials and is waiting on a reply.

“Obviously, we want to make sure that anybody who can be legally registered to vote can get the chance to register and to vote,” Dickerson said. “Part of the question is what does a homeless person declare as a residence? Just because somebody is homeless, I don’t think that disqualifies them.”

The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty agrees. According to the Center’s interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, compiled on its website, “Homeless people who can identify a ‘home base’ – a specific location they consider their home base to which they return regularly and intend to remain for the present – should not be denied the opportunity to register to vote solely because the home base is not a traditional dwelling… This means that homeless people who can identify a street corner, park bench, etc. as their home base by drawing a map should not be prevented from registering to vote for failing to provide a traditional residential address.”

According to a state-by-state breakdown the Center conducted, in North Carolina people living in shelters and living on the street are allowed to register to vote. Also, a mailing address is required to register. How that would affect James’ complaint about the registrations at the Urban Ministry Center is unclear.

“Residence is what you’re looking for,” Dickerson said. “I can put a mailing address down, because you can do that on your registration. But I want to make sure that’s OK, that if they have a mailing address and I’m just listing 945 North College if I’m homeless, that’s where I’m staying at – or whatever it is they give as a definition of their residence.”

But that, James said, is part of the problem. The elections board’s database identifies the Urban Ministry Center as the residence of more than 300 people, and it’s not a residence, James said. The people who registered at Urban Ministry don’t live there; they use it as a mailing address, but they don’t provide any fixed domicile as an alternative, like the law requires, he said.

Even if they had provided a specific, say, park bench or underpass as a physical residence, James said he doubts if that would qualify under North Carolina law.

“How someone can list as a fixed domicile a specific location that could be raided by the police and where the individual can be removed at will is puzzling,” James wrote in his complaint to the county elections board. “How can a legal, fixed domicile be listed for the voter registration database that is illegal under other North Carolina laws regarding panhandling, peddling, loitering and vagrancy? A domicile requires the user to have the right to use that property exclusively. Public property is not a private ‘domicile.’”

Neither, James contends, is a business address like the Urban Ministry Center.

“You’re not allowed to live at the McGuire nuclear facility. You’re not allowed to sleep in the middle of Tryon Street, and 945 North College is an office building that’s not allowed for residential purposes,” James said. “Maybe the people who are registered there can each draw a map to where the appropriate refrigerator box, steam grate and underpass that is their fixed domicile is located. Once they do that, other voters can challenge whether they actually live there.

“Because a whole slew of the people registered at 945 North College have voted time and time again over a period of years,” James said, “and have probably moved from refrigerator box and underpass who knows how many times, and have still managed to vote as though they’re living at the Urban Ministry Center.”

A caveat included in the state board of elections’ agency manual, though, provides some leeway around rules governing where homeless people can register to vote.

“For homeless persons the residence address would be defined as the place where they sleep or spend the majority of their time,” a section of the manual reads; and language like, James said, could throw a whole new dimension to the debate.

“I don’t think where somebody spends a majority of their time is necessarily a residence or domicile under state law,” James said. “But if it is, that would mean a whole lot of Republicans who spend 18-hour days working uptown, the majority of their time, they should be able to register at their office and vote in inner-city district elections. The Democrats who control those districts can’t have it both ways. They can’t have homeless people registering as Democrats ‘living’ in businesses like the Urban Ministry, and not have Republicans who spend all day and night at the office and would probably vote the exact opposite do the same.”