Hello,

This is the local hell raiser checking in here.  <grin> For those who have
not seen the article yet, I'm featured in today's new York times.  I thought
people might want to know about the article so I am sharing it here.  I had
much more to say than what appeared in the article much of it was of a
nature that could not be printed in a family newspaper. <smile>

Kelly




    The New York Times

    August 6, 2004

    A Rule to Avert Balloting Woes Adds to Them

    By FORD FESSENDEN

    CHICAGO - When poll workers could not find Kelly Pierce's name on the
registration rolls during the primary here in March, they told him to take
advantage of a new election rule that allowed him to cast his vote using a
provisional ballot.

    The rule is intended to prevent one of the major problems experienced
in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, when scores of voters,
especially minority voters, were turned away at the polls over
registration questions that could not be resolved quickly.

    So Mr. Pierce, who had voted regularly since 1989, filled out his
paper ballot. Election administrators then proceeded to throw it out,
determining that poll workers had Mr. Pierce file it in the wrong
precinct.

    He was hardly alone. Of the 5,914 provisional ballots cast in the
Chicago primary, 5,498 were disqualified, mostly on technical grounds.

    Provisional voting, the centerpiece of the Help America Vote Act that
Congress passed in 2002, will be put into effect across the nation in the
coming presidential election in an effort to ensure that more votes are
counted.

    But election officials say the experience of Mr. Pierce - and hundreds
like him across the country during primary season - show how failures in
carrying out the measure could end up disenfranchising voters instead.

    All but a handful of states have passed legislation creating some form
of provisional balloting. Most states adopted the new rules to make a
deadline to get federal election money this year.

    An examination of those rules, however, shows there is no uniformity
in how they are applied. Some states, for example, allow provisional
ballots to be counted even if they are filed in the wrong precinct, but at
least 16 states, including Illinois, throw them out.

    And few states have worked out the details of how to train workers to
carry out provisional balloting and other voting changes, setting up the
potential for a protracted ballot-by-ballot fight in any election that is
close.

    "You talk about testing with real bullets, this is going to be testing
election reform with real ballots," said Doug Chapin, executive director
of a nonpartisan election watchdog group, electionline.org.

    In the primary in Chicago, one in 90 ballots was provisionally cast.
The majority of the 93 percent that were thrown out were disqualified
because of technical errors caused by election workers; these included
more than 1,200 ballots filed in the wrong precinct. Some 2,400 were
discounted because affidavits were incompletely or incorrectly filled out.
Only 416 provisional votes were ultimately counted.

    The extent of the problems surprised Chicago election officials, who
said they had hoped provisional ballots would not be widely used. They
blamed inadequate training of poll workers for the high rate of
disqualification.

    "Training your poll workers gets harder every election," said Tom
Leach, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections. "We're laying more
and more on the judges, and they're not professionals, they're senior
citizens and housewives."

    When poll workers could not find Mr. Pierce on the list in the March
primary, he said they made no effort to check whether his voting precinct
had been changed.

    "Someone floated the idea that if I was not in the book, I ought to
vote provisionally," Mr. Pierce said. "They kind of went forward in
lockstep with that idea, rather than thinking about it."

    He has lived in the same apartment since the 1980's, but the city had
recently redrawn precinct lines, he discovered when he called election
officials to see what had happened to his ballot. His new polling place
was just 10 feet from where he filed his doomed ballot, at another table
in the high school gymnasium that served several voting districts that
day.

    In the primary, provisional ballot problems were more likely to
disenfranchise minority voters in Chicago than white voters, exactly the
problem in Florida four years ago that provisional voting was intended to
address. In wards that are 80 percent or more minority members, the rate
of disqualified ballots was double that of wards that are 80 percent
white.

    The major races in the primary in Chicago were not close, but the
disqualified ballots could have been decisive in three close local races,
where they far outnumbered the margin of victory - re-creating another
Florida situation. An incumbent in one race took the matter to court but
eventually conceded, citing a lack of money to pursue the case.

    Mr. Leach said the city's Board of Elections would install phone lines
to help workers navigate the provisional ballot system and gain access to
registration rolls for the November election, when the number of voters
could double and much more is at stake. Officials have also recorded a
training video on provisional ballots and will print detailed maps of the
precincts to distribute to its poll workers.

    Still, Mr. Leach said he would not encourage provisional balloting.

    "We're not going to advertise provisional ballots," Mr. Leach said.
"We don't need thousands of these to go through after Election Day. We
don't have time."

    Across the country, election administrators echoed Mr. Leach's fear:
being swamped with waves of provisional ballots, and short deadlines to
sort them out. The practical situation creates tension with the supposedly
inclusive purpose of provisional balloting - the harder you try to extend
the franchise, the more difficult the post-election task.

    "You don't want to tell someone their vote didn't count because they
were in the wrong polling place," said Jennifer Collins-Foley, who works
on recommended practices for provisional balloting with the Election
Assistance Commission, the new panel overseeing the voting act. "But you
can understand why election officials have concerns about the use of
provisional ballots."

    In Pennsylvania, where the law requires that provisional ballots be
counted even if they are filed in the wrong precinct, the election
administrator has a narrow window for deciding which votes to count.

    "We have three days to make sure they're registered, compare
legislative districts they're eligible for, check the paper poll book to
make sure they didn't vote in the division where they're registered, check
the signature on the provisional ballot with the signature on the books,"
said Bob Lee, the election administrator in Philadelphia.

    In the April primary, Philadelphia had 683 provisional ballots. That
city was far more successful than Chicago in enfranchising those who
filed, counting votes on 70 percent of the ballots. But Mr. Lee fears a
general election that could generate 10 times the workload.

    "In all likelihood, you're going to have the situation where all these
provisional ballots have to be counted after Election Day, with no rules
about how they should be counted," said Tracy Warren, executive director
of the Democracy Project.

    Colorado enacted one of the first provisional-balloting laws in 2002,
and immediately fell into an ugly dispute in a close Congressional race.
Secretary of State Donetta Davidson issued a series of conflicting
directives during the contentious post-election count. Counties used
different standards for counting, and the race ended up in court.

    Election officials expressed additional concerns over other changes
instituted under the Help America Vote Act, including one that requires
new voters to present identification at polling sites.

    The requirement was intended to apply to people who had recently
registered by mail, under the logic that they had to prove their
identities at some point before they could vote. States had to adopt it as
well to get the federal money, and were free to expand the identification
requirement. Five states did, adding to the 11 that required
identification of all voters before the voting act was passed in 2002.

    Most of the rest require identification only from first-time voters,
but the distinction has been confused or misused by poll workers during
primary elections this year.

    In East Chicago, Ind., Helen Hernandez was mistakenly asked to produce
identification in the primary there in May, even though she has lived
there since the 1950's and has voted in just about every election since.

    "This is the first time anyone has ever asked me for identification,"
Mrs. Hernandez said she told the worker at her polling place. She said the
poll worker did not offer her a provisional ballot, either, which the law
requires when there is a dispute over voting eligibility.

    Mrs. Hernandez was on a half-hour lunch break from her janitor's job
and did not have time to retrieve her identification.

    It is not clear how many other voters were turned away in East
Chicago, but the Justice Department said problems were widespread.
Monitors who visited 27 of 32 city precincts that day found that poll
workers in all of them misunderstood voter identification and provisional
voting requirements.

    In South Dakota, site of close House and Senate races in the last two
years, the United States attorney is looking into charges that poll
workers on Indian reservations used the state's identification requirement
to discourage voting.

    Civil rights organizations celebrated passage of the 2002 voting act,
but putting it into effect this election year has cast it in a different
light for many supporters.

    "The Help America Vote Act to many civil rights organizations is not
so much about enfranchising the voter," said Maria Valdez, the regional
counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in
Chicago, "but just the opposite, limiting access."

    Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company


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