Caddo Registrar: Time to Get Your Voter Registration Updated

If your voter registration needs updating, you'd better take care of that soon. Caddo Registrar of Voters Ernie Roberson says the annual voter canvass is coming up.

"It's an electronic canvass from the beginning," Roberson says. "We actually check against the Postal Service customer list, and if Mr. Smith lives at your address, but your name is Brown, we will mail you a card saying we think there may be a discrepancy in here and we're gonna check your address."

Roberson says if you get one of these cards, you need to call his office and workers there will walk you through the process of getting your information updated. If you don't do it by the beginning of the year, you'll be marked inactive.

"In Caddo, we normally run anywhere from about 8 percent of our voters, about 165,000 voters, are inactives, all the way up sometimes to 11 or 12 percent," he says. "So we are always trying to keep addresses straight, because that determines your districts and that's what's so important this next year."

Roberson says 2014 is a big election year in Louisiana, especially in Caddo Parish.

How long do you have before you're considered an inactive voter?

"If you're an inactive voter, and you stay inactive for two federal general elections -- and that would be, say the presidential year of 2012, and then you were inactive in 2014 -- then after the 2014 election, if you haven't voted, then you're removed from the rolls," Roberson says.

An address change isn't the only thing you'll need to make sure is updated. Ladies who have had a marital status change also need to make sure the name on their driver's license matches the one the Registrar's Office has on file.

If you're up for a driver's license renewal soon, you might want to go ahead and update your voter information then.