Several states face likely voter problems for elections<

By Karen Branch-Brioso

St. Louis Post-Dispatch   19 October 2004

(KRT) - WASHINGTON –– A non-partisan clearinghouse for election-reform research has singled out Missouri as one of three states with the potential for big Election Day ballot problems.

The group, electionline.org, said Tuesday it will send researchers to observe voting in Missouri, Florida and Ohio.

"(Missouri) state officials have been assuring voters that there will be no repeat of 2000," said Elizabeth Schneider, a researcher for the group. "Despite those assurances, our report found that conditions are ripe for problems on Election Day."

She said one potential trouble spot for Missouri is the large number of voters who will cast ballots on punch card systems like the ones Florida did away with after its infamous recount fraught with hanging and dimpled chads. (In Missouri, 37 of 116 jurisdictions still use punch-card systems, including urban areas with a large swath of the state's voters in the St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas.) She also cited security concerns about Secretary of State Matt Blunt's plan to allow troops in combat zones to vote by e-mail.

"A similar program was rejected by the Pentagon after concerns with security and integrity of the vote," Schneider said.

Missouri, like Florida and Ohio, is also fresh from a court battle on how it will handle its provisional ballots –– which could lead to confusion and legal challenges. Congress ordered the back-up ballots for voters who go to the polls yet find they're not on voter lists. If that happens on Nov. 2, those voters may cast provisional ballots that will be added to the tallies later if election officials verify their eligibility. But each state has different rules on when those votes should count.

A federal judge in Missouri ruled last week that the state doesn't have to count those ballots when voters cast them in a precinct other than their own. But he also said the state could refuse to count only those ballots cast by voters who had been directed by poll workers to the proper polling place - and who still voted in the wrong place.

"What's unclear right now is how that will work in practice," said Doug Chapin, director of electionline.org. "We don't know how that will operate in Missouri."

Terri Durdaller, a spokeswoman for Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt, said Blunt is hopeful that the elections will run smoothly, as they have in three statewide elections since 2000.

Ohio is also considered ripe for problems. A battleground state where 72 percent of voters still cast ballots on punch card machines, it had a similar lawsuit over provisional ballot rules. There, a federal judge said that as long as a voter casts a ballot in the county where he or she was registered, the vote must be counted. That ruling is under appeal, which Chapin said could breed confusion; he noted that pollworkers in Ohio already have gotten two separate instructions on how to handle provisional ballots and may yet get a third.

Florida got rid of its butterfly ballots and hanging chads, but it still could face problems, in part due to its last-minute provisional ballot rules. The Florida Supreme Court ruled this week that the Legislature was within its rights to approve only those provisional ballots cast in the voter's proper precinct.

Chapin said another problem may be the "vast number of people across the country - members of the media, advocates, election watchers, freelance muckrakers, you name it - who will be at the polls on Election Day, looking for trouble.

"There is no injustice real or perceived considered too minor to merit some kind of action. In the strangest way, the ... people who went looking to prevent another Florida in 2004 might actually help it happen."