Politics

Can '08 election be fair?

Experts foresee problems with Florida voter rolls, new equipment, laws and lawsuits.

By STEVE BOUSQUET, Tallahassee Bureau Chief
Published December 9, 2007

ATLANTA - Elections experts from Southern states on Saturday debated the potential for problems at the polls in 2008, and the Florida contingent did its part to uphold the state's reputation for voting controversy.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning bristled at an election supervisor's complaints of inaccurate information in a statewide voter database that supervisors rely on to make sure the voter rolls are correct.

The complaint came from Leon County's Ion Sancho and, to a lesser extent, Sarasota's Kathy Dent. Both voiced concern about cases of incorrect information on the rolls or cases in which people may be denied the right to vote because of human errors in entering names, addresses and other vital information that does not exactly match a driver license's or Social Security number or misspells a hyphenated surname.

Sancho, an outspoken critic of the state's management of voter information, predicted "mass confusion and chaos" on Election Day in November, when Florida voters will help elect the next president.

"Florida is not going down the crapper when it comes to our voter registration system, and by the way, you can quote me on that," Browning said in a luncheon speech. "I do not foresee mass confusion and chaos as we approach 2008."

Browning acknowledged that errors occur, but only in a tiny fraction of cases. He noted that voter information is most often entered by state driver's license clerks, because more than 60 percent of voters register at those offices, or by county elections clerks.

Browning estimated about 14,000 people have been denied voting eligibility because their forms did not exactly match driver's license data or Social Security numbers, as federal law requires. But he said that is less than 1 percent of the 1.5-million voter registration forms processed since 2006.

The daylong conference at an airport hotel in Atlanta was sponsored by electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for election information created after the 2000 Florida recount. The center is sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Officials from Georgia, Louisiana and Texas also attended. Similar regional forums have been or will be held in San Francisco, Chicago and Washington.

Florida was a focus of the seminar because of its size, status as a battleground state and track record of close and contentious elections. The state's upcoming switch from touch screens to paper ballots on optical scanners in 2008, ordered by Gov. Charlie Crist and the Legislature, marks the third type of voting equipment used in as many presidential elections.

In 2008, "the watchword is change," said Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org. "Whether that change constitutes improvement is very much an open question."

Sarasota Supervisor Dent, who oversaw a disputed 2006 congressional election decided by 369 votes and marked by 18,000 touch screen undervotes, took issue with electionline's description of that race as a fiasco.

Citing recounts and audits upholding the county's equipment and vote tabulations, Dent said: "I don't believe there was a fiasco in Sarasota County. ... I don't believe they found anything wrong with our equipment."

She said the rapid switch to paper ballots is further complicated by an accelerated election calendar, with the presidential primary and property tax referendum on the same Jan. 29 ballot.

In her county alone, Dent said, it will be necessary to print 471 different ballot styles to allow for differences in voters' party affiliations and residences.

"The likelihood of human error is much stronger," Dent said.

She ticked off a series of other new laws that are likely to add to the burdens on election managers, notably a Dec. 31 New Year's Eve deadline to register to vote in the Jan. 29 primary and several pending lawsuits challenging voter registration laws.

In one case, Florida's law imposing a registration deadline 29 days before an election is under attack by labor unions, which say voters should be able to correct mistakes on voter registration forms that would block them from voting. Five large urban Florida counties have already signaled their willingness to implement such a grace period.

Some experts foresee more problems in Florida in 2008. Leon County's Sancho cited 16,646 valid Leon County voters, all of whom are shown to have the same prior street address: 3740 Club Drive, Duluth, Ga. "It's troubling that incorrect information is being attached to voters' records," Sancho said.

After hearing Sancho's claim, Browning ordered his staff to scour the database for the ex-Duluth residents and found 27, not 16,000. Browning accused Sancho of fomenting hysteria.

Merle King, executive director of the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, didn't mention Crist by name. But he decried officials who actively undermine public confidence in touch screen voting, comparing it to "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater."

The argument in favor of giving people a paper receipt for their vote choices may appease the public, but it violates the constitutional requirement for a secret ballot.

"If you can tell how you voted, I can tell how you voted," King said. "At some point, the voter and the ballot must be irrevocably severed."

Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@sptimes.com or 850-224-7263.

[Last modified December 8, 2007, 21:58:35]