A variety of reasons prevented almost 10 percent of applications to vote online or by mail in the 2004 Michigan Democratic caucus from being approved, party officials said Tuesday.

Around 12,000 of the 123,000 applicants who wished to vote from home were turned down, Michigan Democratic Party spokesman Jason Moon said.

He said reasons for rejection varied from faulty information provided by the applicant to errors in the Secretary of State's Qualified Voter File. Some were simply not registered to vote, a requirement to vote online or by mail.

"If (applicants) give us some incorrect information, we make every attempt to match it to the qualified voter (file)," Moon said. "People that were rejected were encouraged to reapply with the correct information."

Mark Grebner, a political analyst, Ingham county commissioner and one of the people matching botched applications with their rightful owners, said a portion of the denied applications were the result of design problems.

"The way you avoid data problems is you have good forms, you have supervisors that review problems and you have programs that are flexible," Grebner said. "The Democratic Party went into this and decided that nobody would make any mistakes.

"It's like opening a convenience store downtown and deciding all the people that would shop there would be outstanding, upright citizens."

Grebner pointed out names such as David Howard, which he said could easily be Howard David, among those that were difficult to match to their applicant.

Taking a small break from attempting to correct applications, Grebner said he suspects his colleagues and he will be able to reduce the amount of rejected applicants to 4 percent.

In efforts to fix discrepancies, they match the state's voter file against the declined applications.

"Somebody needed to do some actual hard work," he said. "Unfortunately, it's me that they seemed to pick for this purpose."

Despite problems, Moon said he feels offering voters the chance to vote by mail or online is a positive thing.

"We're happy with the results," he said. "We will try to use this method in the future."

Moon said about 25,000 citizens had voted by mail or online as of Tuesday.

The deadline for voting online is 4 p.m. Saturday, with mail-in ballots due by 10 a.m. The Michigan Democratic Party encourages people whose applications were turned down to vote at one of the state's 590 caucus sites on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

East Lansing will host three caucus sites: The MSU Union, Edgewood United Church, 469 N. Hagadorn Road, and the MEA Service Building, 1480 Kendale Blvd.

Caucus voters do not have to be registered voters to vote in person, but they must attend their local precinct and be eligible to vote in the November general election.

Precinct sites are available at mi-democrats.com.