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electionline Weekly - October 26, 2006

I. In Focus This Week

Report Finds Potential for Trouble at Polls
New machines, procedures and close races could add up to a difficult Election Day

electionline.org

With the mid-term election two weeks away, a comprehensive report on the state of election administration around the country finds cause for concern in a number of states.

An estimated third of all voters will cast ballots on voting systems never before used in a general election, while new procedures and legal battles over voter identification could confuse voters, poll workers or both. Unfinished and just-completed statewide voter registration databases, required as of Jan. 1, 2006 by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), have led to some confusion in parts of the country as state agencies combine records and local election officials cede control of their long-held registration rosters.

"The ingredients are there for problems in some parts of the country," said Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org, the nation's leading nonpartisan and non-advocacy source for election reform analysis and information. "Any time you have new procedures, new voting systems that many poll workers and voters might not be familiar with and combine that with an election that could decide the fate of one or both branches of Congress, the potential is there for a messy November 7. The steps that have been taken to improve and modernize elections as part of HAVA could make things worse this year before it makes voting better in the future."

"Election Preview 2006: What's Changed, What Hasn't and Why", issued by electionline.org, provides an overview of the state of the American electoral system with 11 days remaining before the mid-term vote.

The report details specific election changes in each of the 50 states and identifies 10 "states to watch" on Election Day, detailing reasons why election problems could arise in each.

Among the nationwide findings from the report:

• Concerns about electronic voting machines have been steadily growing since the passage of HAVA, with some advocates and candidates urging voters to use paper absentee ballots and vote from home rather than "risk" casting their votes on electronic voting systems at polling places.

• An 11th-hour decision by the U.S. Supreme Court will allow Arizona to continue to enforce its identification requirements at the polls. Voters will be required to show either a government-issued photo ID or two alternative forms. The legal back-and-forth could confuse both poll workers and voters on Election Day, just as it has some journalists in recent coverage.

• Spurred in part by HAVA, the number of states requiring all voters to present identification before voting has doubled since 2000. New rules that require voters present a state- or federally-issued photo ID have been enacted by legislatures in Missouri, Georgia and Indiana, but have been struck down by courts in all but Indiana. The U.S. House passed a similar measure in September. The Senate has yet to take up the bill.

• The federally-mandated implementation of statewide databases continues to challenge state officials. The U.S. Department of Justice sued New York, Alabama, New Jersey and Maine for failing to complete databases, requiring each state to devise a plan to comply with federal law in time for the November 7 vote.

• While there could be numerous places with problems, ten states in particular bear watching, for changes to procedures, recent legal challenges to state policies, close races and new equipment, or in some cases, a combination of all three. The report names Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington, detailing what to watch for in each.

The report notes that election administration has undergone more changes - from machines to databases to ID and provisional voting procedures - in the past two years than perhaps any other time in the nation's history. And that is a likely cause of trouble at the polls in some parts of the country.

"Any amount of change breeds some level of uncertainty," Chapin said. "In this case, we have had a tremendous amount of change in the way votes are cast and counted, as well as how voters are registered, identified at polls and provided safeguards, such as provisional ballots, if they experience problems. While we can't predict with any certainty where trouble will be, we can say that our research and experience suggest at least some turbulence on Election Day."

The report is available on our Web site and in print version. To request a copy, e-mail: media@electionline.org.

States Differ in Strategies for 'Fleeing Voters'

By Dan Seligson
electionline.org

Before 2000, the term "confirmation screen" had little meaning in elections. A quick scan of a ballot, be it punch card, optical scan, or just an 'x' in a box on a sheet of paper, was the voter's last chance to make sure their vote accurately represented their preferences.

With new technology have come new opportunities to improve accuracy. Voters using electronic voting machines are required to confirm their choices by looking at a summary screen before finalizing their vote, something the old fashioned systems never offered or required. Over-votes are impossible while under-votes are discouraged by on-screen reminders.

But with the new requirement to double-check e-ballots has come a new phenomenon - the fleeing voter, or someone who leaves a polling place before completing the process.

With elections less than two weeks away, some states have made their rules for fleeing voters clear - cancel the vote if the voter never confirmed their choices - despite criticism from some corners that it disenfranchises a voter.

Last month, Pennsylvania's Department of State distributed a memo to local election officials stating that the votes of fleeing voters should be cancelled. In the primary, the first time most counties in the state used electronic voting machines, poll workers were given discretion to complete the process for the voter.

Cancelling the votes of someone who registers, shows up at the polls, casts a ballot and leaves because of confusion or some other reason does not make sense to some observers and advocates.

"It certainly seems to me that if possible the voter who has 'fled' should have his or her ballot counted, for as many races that he or she tried to vote in," said R. Michael Alvarez, a professor of political science at CalTech.

California, in fact, is one state that allows poll workers to finalize the ballots of voters who flee. According to the state's "Uniform Counting Standards" issued in March, "if a voter leaves a voting booth without casting the ballot, the precinct official shall cause the ballot to be cast without examining the ballot."

Still, the idea of leaving a half-finished or nearly finished vote to the discretion of a poll worker seems no less comforting to Alvarez.

Alvarez witnessed one such incident during California's June primary, where a voter given the wrong party's ballot was sent away by a poll worker who proceeded "to stand over the machine, go through the ballot and cast it."

It is this fear of non-standard procedures that has motivated some states with electronic voting to require poll workers to cancel the votes of those who have abandoned machines without casting ballots.

Georgia and the District of Columbia have rules similar to Pennsylvania's requiring incomplete votes to be nullified. Both Georgia and the District require election judges to make notations on official records detailing the fleeing voter.

Linda Latimore, director of elections for DeKalb County (Atlanta) said fleeing voters are rare, with "fewer than five per election" in recent years. The low number, she said, can be attributed to procedures which require a poll worker be stationed at the door to collect the activator cards that enable voters to cast ballots.

'If a voter walks away without finishing, they will get stopped because they have to give it back," she said. "But there are a few people who get frustrated and walk away, but we have someone stationed at the door to get the card."

Similarly, the District has an electronic ballot clerk who is assigned to collect the cards that pop out of machines when a voter has finished casting his or her ballot.

Bill O'Field, a spokesman for the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics, said the policy to cancel the vote is one of voter intent.

"The Board has to determine the voter's intent. For that reason, the precinct captain will back out of the person's ballot," O' Field said. "We don't know what the intent was going to be. They might have wanted to change their mind."

Kim Alexander, head of the California Voter Foundation, said clear guidelines are vital for largely volunteer corps of poll workers - and probably voiding votes is the "safest policy."

But she said with new machines, voters should have a little more leeway as they learn to interact with the technology.

"I also worry that voters are not as familiar with new voting interfaces as they could be," Alexander said. "They may not realize that there's another step involved to finish voting."

II. Election Reform News This Week

• The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1199 and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless filed suit in federal court on Tuesday saying Ohio's new voter identification law created a confusing mess that will lead to an unfair election on November 7. The lawsuit says that the new rules "are confusing, vague and impossible to apply." "There's just a good bit of confusion and a good bit of inconsistency," H. Ritchey Hollenbaugh, one of the attorneys who filed the suit told The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer. Also in Ohio, a coalition of national news organizations filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to spell out rules for interviews as voters leave polling pla! ces on November 7. This lawsuit contends exit-polling guidelines issued earlier this month are vague and confusing.

• Election officials in Chicago were forced to patch a security flaw in their Web site this week after a candidate discovered a programming error that made private voter information vulnerable to theft. The information has been available for at least five years. "We don't have any evidence that there was any theft," Tom Leach, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections told the Chicago Tribune. "But we don't want to be in a position where someone has their Social Security and date of birth stolen." The error was fixed late last week and the Cook County state's attorney was informed about the potential for identity theft. Leach told the paper that the Board of Elections plans to hire a computer forensics expert to determine if personal information was stolen.

• There were more questions about Maryland's voting system this week when it was revealed that Diebold replaced a flawed electronic component in approximately 4,700 machines in 2005. According to a report in The Washington Post, to eliminate unpredictable "screen freezes" which had occurred in the machines since they were first introduced in Maryland in 2002, Diebold installed new system boards in machines in four Maryland counties including the two largest voting jurisdictions. "They have updated all the units and the problem has been resolved," said Ross Goldstein, deputy state election administrator. The screen freezes are unrelated to the problems experienced during September's primary.

• A group of election security experts recently released a report about the government's Interim Voting Assistance System (IVAS) that allows overseas voters to vote using email and fax. The group found that the system poses significant risks including exposing voters to identity theft, creating an opportunity for hackers or others to tamper with ballots while in transit and, in the case of some military voters, essentially allowing their employer (DoD), and not just a local elections office, to view the ballot.

• As Election Day approaches, a host of ballot problems are popping up nationwide. In Arizona, a misplaced decimal point may cost early childhood and health programs millions of dollars. According to The Arizona Republic, Proposition 203 is built around an 80-cent-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes but the ballot language calls for a ".80 cent/pack" tax increase which is actually less than 1 cent per pack. Kevin Tyne, deputy secretary of state said no one in that office, the Attorney General's office or at any of the 40 town hall meetings about the proposition picked up the mistake.