Making each vote count

By Gary Scott , Staff Writer

PASADENA A team of professors from Caltech and MIT on Monday released a set of recommendations to improve the way votes are counted and minimize the chance that ballots will be lost, misread or invalidated in the upcoming presidential election.

The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project prepared the report after reviewing what it says were common mistakes made in the canvass of the 2000 presidential election.

According to Caltech professor Michael Alvarez, a coauthor of the report, those mistakes disenfranchised as many as six million voters nationwide.

To ensure a more accurate count in 2004, which is expected to be close in many states, the Caltech/MIT team offered a 4- point plan it says will help avoid the tortured Florida-type recount of 2000 in those states where the outcome is in dispute.

"What the 2000 election did is focus an enormous amount of scrutiny on the process,' said Alvarez, whose book, "Point, Click and Vote,' looks at the efficacy of Internet voting.

While some improvements have been made in the federal election system, Alvarez said he believes the potential is still there for small errors to add up to major trouble.

"They are common problems, and ones we don't think will require a great commitment of resources to fix,' Alvarez said, noting time and money are in short supply. "It shouldn't require any state or county to spend millions of dollars to do.'

He and his fellow scientists have advocated a more scientific approach to elections, and several of their recommendations mirror the methods used by scientists to double- and triple-check data to ensure a valid conclusion.

"We need a high-quality, high- quantity flow of information' to conduct a proper "forensic analysis of elections,' Alvarez said.

The recommendations were handed to newly created U.S. Elections Assistance Commission last week. While the agency has no authority to mandate the way states and counties conduct elections, Alvarez said it has "a lot of moral power and a little financial power' to push for these changes.

The first recommendation is that all secretaries of state collect the data needed to complete a full audit OF the election, including the number of registered voters and absentee ballots cast.

Eleven states do not report total ballots cast, the report says, and inconsistencies between other states makes it "nearly impossible to track the performance of equipment and election procedures.'

Second, fix common problems in ballot design and language that confuse voters. For instance, if a ballot has two sides, voters should be informed in large, plain text.

Also, where optical scan ballots are being used, counting machines should be available to check for over-votes when more than one candidate is picked before a ballot is cast.

Third, all states should have uniform guidelines in place by mid-August for counting provisional ballots. This is the first year all 50 states will offer provisional balloting, which allows people whose registration is in question, because they went to the wrong precinct or recording error, to vote.

In 2000 some people were unable to vote because they went to the wrong precinct, the report says.

Last, the federal Election Assistance Commission should develop a procedure to monitor elections and investigate complaints.

The report contains a list of other recommendations the team would like to see implemented in the future.

Meantime, the team plans to expand its efforts into voter education in the coming months as well as focus on California's various voting techniques InkaVote, optical scan and electronic to ensure people know how to make sure their vote is counted.