Needed: Voting machines

Residents are forced to wait for hours as suburban precincts outgrow their capacity

RICHARD RUBIN AND BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Staff Writers  Charlotte Observer   04 November 2004

 

Why did some polling places across the Carolinas look like Soviet bread stores, with lines spilling onto sidewalks and wrapping around buildings?

It wasn't just heavy turnout.

Especially in fast-growing areas, the system was strained by precincts stuffed with too many registered voters, an unusually long ballot and, in some places, a shortage of voting machines.

That combination left election officials unable to cope with the turnout, and it left voters stuck in hours-long lines.

Some went home. Many waited patiently. And others steamed.

"They should buy more voting machines," said Mike Hoover, 53, of Belmont, who waited more than two hours.

Everyone from state legislators to county commissioners to local elections boards contributed to an Election Day that ran late into the night.

But population growth played a role, too, and the problems were worst in suburbs where voters are jammed into once-rural precincts.

The state legislature froze precinct boundaries after 2000 because redistricting lawsuits were still ongoing. As a result, voter rolls boomed and many schools and churches lack enough room for voting machines or voters' cars.

More than 4,000 people are registered to vote at the Coddle Creek No. 4 precinct in southern Iredell County. Everywhere else in Iredell, most people voted in 30 minutes or less. At Coddle Creek No. 4, the wait was two hours.

In Mecklenburg County, 18 of the 190 precincts have more than 4,000 people. The largest, Cooks Memorial Presbyterian Church in northwest Mecklenburg, has 5,863 registered voters.

"Any time that you have 4,000, you're borrowing trouble in a presidential election year," said Gary Bartlett, executive director of the State Board of Elections.

The freeze on precinct splitting will end in December, and elections directors say they are eager to break apart some of these large precincts.

But that's not always easy. Residential development often races ahead of civic construction. Sometimes, there isn't another building for voting.

Shirley Secrest, the elections director in Union County, said she eagerly awaits a new fire station near the overcrowded Marvin precinct, where lines were some of the longest in the Charlotte area.

Secrest has a bigger problem: not enough machines. Union, the state's fastest-growing county, has 185 electronic machines, or one for every 495 registered voters.

The county should double its total to meet state recommendations. Every year since 2000, Secrest has asked the county for 60 more machines. Every year she gets turned down, and she understands why.

"Do you want to put the money for the schools that the children use every day or for the voting machines for this larger turnout that you don't have but once every four years?" Secrest asked.

That's a persistent problem across the country and it has not abated, even after the 2000 election put a spotlight on the wobbly machinery of American elections, said Doug Lewis. He's executive director of the Houston-based Election Center, a nonprofit group that tracks trends in election administration.

"The tendency is for a lot of locations in America not to take any action until disaster befalls them," he said. "It's budgeting by fire. Whatever's burning the hottest is what we'll fund this year."

Help is on the way.

N.C. counties will probably get $80 million worth of voting machines before 2006 because of a new federal law and federal grants. The state will approve manufacturers and impose uniform standards.

New voting systems alone may not solve the problem.

Electronic machines can actually make it harder to adjust to expected surges in turnout.

Counties with paper ballots including scanners and punch cards found in Lincoln and Cabarrus counties, respectively can easily add new voting booths, at about $300 apiece.

But Mecklenburg, which uses electronic machines, must spend $3,500 to add a machine and order it well ahead of the election. And, because new state standards are coming, Mecklenburg has been reluctant to expand its 1,400-machine stock, which will soon be obsolete. It recently added about 100 early-voting machines.

Furthermore, because of an unusually long ballot, voters faced lines even in counties with the number of machines suggested by the state. Typical early-morning waits in Mecklenburg were more than an hour. Many Gaston voters waited for several hours for electronic machines, especially in high-growth areas.

Those delays came although more than a quarter of the N.C. ballots were cast before Election Day.

South Carolina, which debuted touch-screen voting in 15 counties on Tuesday, bought one machine for every 250 registered voters and ordered extras to prepare for 5 percent population growth.

Still, in northern York County, voters surged to the polls early Tuesday and waited more than an hour for the new machines.

"Everybody showed up at once," said county Election Director Wanda Hemphill. "How do you combat something like that? And how do you predict something like that?"