Voting system failures

Editorial   USA Today   09 November 2004
Election officials, voting-machine manufacturers and others are smugly congratulating themselves that this year's presidential election did not wind up as a repeat of the mess that occurred in 2000. And the public is buying in: In a poll for the Associated Press, 54% said the results made them more confident in the fairness of the election system.

Not so fast. A closer look suggests that confidence may be based as much on luck as on improvements in the election system. The evidence suggests serious problems remain:

?New technology. In one Ohio precinct, an error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush more than 3,800 extra votes. In a North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because the computerized voting device wouldn't hold as much data as officials had been led to believe. In San Francisco, a software problem distorted the vote count in some races. In New Orleans, after new machines didn't boot up properly, voters were told to go home and come back later. Other breakdowns or malfunctions were reported in Florida, Virginia, Maryland and New Mexico.

?Old technology. In New York, so many antiquated mechanical voting machines broke down that technicians couldn't keep up with the repair calls. In parts of Ohio still using punch-card systems, an unknown number of votes were counted twice.

?Registration confusion. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of voters ? 155,000 in pivotal Ohio alone ? were allowed to cast only provisional ballots because of registration mix-ups or other problems. Congress mandated the creation of computerized statewide registration lists to help address the issue, but more than 80% of the states have not complied.

?Inadequate preparation. Tales of long lines, too few voting machines, confusion over absentee and provisional ballots, and poll workers who didn't know voters' rights were legion. Incidents of racial discrimination in demanding voter identification were reported. One hot line logged nearly 200,000 calls from puzzled or angry voters.

The difference between 2000 and 2004 was not that problems were fixed, but that the election wasn't as close. If President Bush and John Kerry had been 1,300 votes apart in Ohio instead of 130,000, the U.S. almost certainly would have been ensnared in recounts and legal fights like those four years ago.

Instead of proclaiming satisfaction with this year's results, election officials, equipment makers and lawmakers need to get on with fixing those problems. It's all too likely that their contentment will lead to more foot-dragging and new problems in 2008.