Parties promote absentee ballots
But more mail-in votes may leave room for fraud, critics caution.

By Robert Perez | Sentinel Staff Writer
Nearly four years after absentee ballots helped hand George W. Bush a 537-vote victory in Florida and the presidency, political strategists from both parties are pushing to get the ballots into the hands of even more voters in the upcoming election.

More than 700,000 voters cast absentee ballots in 2000 and, since then, the Legislature passed new election laws making it even easier to vote by mail. Strategists say they expect a big increase in absentee ballots this year and critics say that could lead to a big increase in voter fraud.

The absentee ballot once the last resort of sick or vacationing voters has become a cornerstone to winning close elections in politically divided, critically important Florida.

"An absentee ballot is a guaranteed vote," said Joseph Agostini, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Florida. "Any campaign worth its salt will be encouraging people to cast absentee votes."

Bush's razor-thin victory in Florida was sealed by at least 401,741 absentee votes he received compared with at least 267,758 for Al Gore. Winning Florida's 25 electoral votes pushed Bush ahead of Gore, though the Democrat won a majority of the popular vote nationwide.

This year, Florida's influence has grown along with its population and now carries 27 electoral votes, 10 percent of those needed to win the White House. The race between the president and Democratic challenger John Kerry is expected to be tight and absentees flowing in by mail, delivered by campaign operatives and special-interest groups will again loom large.

2000 firestorm

Within days of the 2000 general election, Central Florida became the center of an absentee-ballot firestorm. For 36 days, high-powered lawyers and politicians sued and countersued to protect their candidates' claim to the state's electoral votes ones that held the presidency in the balance.

Seminole County's election supervisor Sandra Goard, a Republican, was sued for allowing GOP operatives into her office to modify absentee-ballot requests initially rejected because of missing information. Voter-identification numbers were added to more than 2,000 of the rejected requests, which were then resubmitted and accepted.

The suit, filed by prominent Seminole County Democrat Harry Jacobs, asked for all 15,675 absentee ballots cast in the county to be thrown out. Had the courts agreed, Al Gore would have become the country's 43rd president.

But the Florida Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Goard's actions, although displaying "faulty judgment," didn't justify throwing out the ballots.

Goard, who stepped down earlier this year, maintained throughout that she did nothing wrong. Although the high-profile court battle made Goard and her office the focus of world attention for a time, reformers didn't focus on whether absentee-balloting rules were so lax that they allowed party pressure to affect the process.

Instead, state and federal reformers who reviewed Florida's flawed election laws focused on paper ballots the great hanging- and pregnant-chad debate.

The mission was not to insulate the absentee process from manipulation, but to ensure that everyone eligible to vote in Florida and across the country has the opportunity to vote. And that meant making voting more convenient.

"We want every eligible voter who has the ability to cast a vote to do so if they wish and for every legal vote to be counted," Agostini said.

The Federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 created provisions for ensuring ease of voting and accurate counting. Part of the legislation provided funds to replace punch-card and lever voting machines. Other provisions eventually led to Florida allowing voting as early as 15 days before any election.The goal was to ease the crush of voting on Election Day by giving voters more time to cast their ballots. Making it easier to vote by absentee ballot, reformers argued, would help even more.

Ballot witnesses ped

Earlier this year, Florida legislators removed a requirement that absentee ballots must include the name, address and signature of a witness. Proponents of the legislation, which had the support of the state's election supervisors, said it removed a requirement that often led to ballots being thrown out on a technicality.

But some warn that the emphasis on convenience may open the door wider to vote fraud.

"By removing the witness requirement, the potential for voter fraud has increased exponentially," said Dick Batchelor, a long-time Orlando political consultant and lobbyist.

Batchelor, a former Democratic legislator, knows the value of absentee ballots: He led a successful 2002 campaign to increase the sale tax to raise money for schools.

But that was before the rules were relaxed.

It was irregularities in witness signatures and addresses that led to an investigation of the 1997 Miami mayoral race. The probe ultimately led to the election results being overturned.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials say they are investigating potential irregularities and fraud in the collection of absentee ballots as part of its review of Orlando's March mayoralelection.

Without witnesses who can be contacted about the veracity of the absentee ballot, there is no way to check, Batchelor said.At least two election supervisors disagree.

The witness requirement more often than not caused legitimate ballots to be thrown out, said Orange County supervisor Bill Cowles. In the March presidential primary, which occurred before the witness requirement was removed, at least 2,000 absentee ballots statewide were disqualified, he said.

"Those ballots were probably legitimate," he said.

By keeping a close count on the number of ballots mailed out and those received back and by checking signatures on ballots against signatures on file, supervisors can weed out fraudulent ballots, Cowles said.

Voting alternatives

Ion Sancho, Leon County's election supervisor, has been encouraging alternatives to voting at the polls for years. Voter-education drives, absentee ballots and early voting have given Leon County claim to the highest average voter turnout of any urban Florida county, he said.

Sancho thinks the witness requirement and an earlier requirement to have the ballot notarized did little to stop voter fraud.

"It seems those requirements were nothing more than barriers to citizens who wanted to cast legitimate votes," he said.

But State Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami, who voted against removing the witness requirement, said the only investigative avenue for finding absentee-voter fraud is gone.

"This is a product of the state's election supervisors," he said. "Their desire to get elections done easy has come at the expense of getting it done right."

Gelber said preserving the integrity of election results is a non-partisan issue, so Democrats and Republicans should worry about the heightened risk of absentee-voter fraud.

"All I want is a fair call," he said. "And I think the other side ought to as well."

Ability to audit ballots

Concerns about the integrity of the voting process aren't limited to Florida.

Bev Harris, a former Seattle marketing executive, has been traveling the country inspecting electronic-voting systems, talking to voters and sounding a warning best summarized by the title of her book, Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century.

Harris said the push to computerize ballot counting has removed the best auditing system for uncovering counting errors a paper trail. What's more, removing barriers to absentee voting creates more potential for fraud, she said.

Harris' concern about absentees focuses mostly on making sure that election officials can provide an audit of the number of absentee ballots delivered by the Postal Service to check against the number counted on Election Day. A simple post-office receipt would suffice, but that doesn't happen nearly enough, she said.

"Counting votes is just bookkeeping," Harris said. "But you have to have the ability to audit."

The absentee-ballot process offers plenty of opportunity for unscrupulous people to manipulate the vote, she said. Ballots can disappear. Ballots can be swapped out of the envelope.

The fixes can be simple and relatively inexpensive, she said. For example, Webcams could be placed in the rooms where ballots are counted, allowing voters to watch online for any funny business.

Whether such additional protections are ever put in place is anyone's guess, but they're unlikely to be seen before November's general election.

In the meantime, Republicans and Democrats alike will be pulling out all the stops to get people to vote in key battleground states such as Florida.

They're also prepared to take that fight to the courts, if necessary.

During a recent strategy session for Kerry's Florida campaign, officials said they would be lining up thousands of volunteers for a massive grass-roots effort. They also made clear they will be lining up dozens of the state's best lawyers to respond to any legal challenges should there be a repeat of 2000.