State plans elections training

Federal money will send county precinct workers to community colleges

SHARIF DURHAMS  Charlotte Observer   23 November 2004

Statewide boot camps on election laws and procedures will start next year, the state's top election official said Tuesday in the wake of unprecedented problems tabulating votes in this month's elections.

Gary Bartlett, director of the N.C. Board of Elections, also said he will boost sporadic "wellness checks" in which state officials examine whether counties follow proper procedures and stock the materials they need. His goal is to check each of the state's 100 counties over the next two years.

Bartlett specifically mentioned problems in Gaston County, where some ballots remain uncounted three weeks after the election.

Bartlett outlined the beefed up training Tuesday after a telephone meeting with the five members of the state Board of Elections to certify the Nov. 2 elections for most statewide and local offices.

Results of five N.C. races including two disputed judgeships and an N.C. House member who didn't file required paperwork were left as unofficial. They could be cleared up next week.

Tallies in the two closest state races for N.C. Commissioner of Agriculture and Superintendent of Public Instruction also were left unofficial, pending legal complaints about more than 4,000 votes that were lost in coastal Carteret County and other voting issues. Current totals have Republican Steve Troxler leading the Democrat Cobb by 2,287 votes in the Agriculture race and Democrat June Atkinson leading Republican Bill Fletcher by 8,535 votes in the superintendent contest.

A lawsuit filed by Fletcher in the education race, challenging whether provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct can be legally counted, goes before a state judge Monday.

Tuesday the state board will also hear formal complaints filed in both races on the provisional ballots and lost Carteret votes.

The state Elections Board is still collecting information in Gaston County, where state officials were still finding votes Tuesday that didn't show up in the county's official tallies. Earlier, a majority of Gaston precincts reported a difference between the number of ballots cast and the number of people recorded as voting. The county's Elections Director Sandra Page went on medical leave Tuesday.

Bartlett said he wants the training to help eliminate problems in county elections offices.

The detailed duties of elections workers that could be addressed include cross-checking numbers from poll sign-in books and voter authorization slips with the number of ballots. In counties that use paper ballots, they have to balance the number of used and unused ballots.

"It's not rocket science we're talking about, but it's a lot of work," Bartlett said.

The state is responsible for training county elections staff and each county's three-member board of elections. Each county trains the nearly 8,500 precinct judges for a statewide election.

Under Bartlett's plan, the state would pay for any precinct judge to take 12 to 15 90-minute classes in election procedures at any of 13 community colleges. Central Piedmont would be one site.

The classes would be voluntary for precinct judges and paid for with money from the Help America Vote Act.

Bartlett said his goal was to start the program when new precinct judges are chosen in August and to train at least one judge in each of the state's 2,400 precincts within two years.

While Bartlett praised work of precinct judges and called them a critical link to good elections, he also called them the "most vulnerable link" because they're not regular employees.