Pennsylvania counties fumble voting study
With 18 not responding, state misses chance to find out what works, what doesn't.

By Tim Darragh Of The Morning Call   13 March 2005
County election offices representing close to half of Pennsylvania's registered voters failed to respond to a post-Election Day survey, hampering a first-ever federal assessment of voting in the United States.

Eighteen counties, including Philadelphia and Allegheny ? the two most populous ? and other counties in the Lehigh Valley region are not represented in the survey. The state Department of State, which oversees elections in Pennsylvania, forwarded the data it gathered to the federal Election Assistance Commission.

By submitting a report lacking data from so many counties, Pennsylvania misses an opportunity to find out what works and what needs fixing in its elections. With more complete reporting, Pennsylvania could provide valuable insight into voting across the country, since the state ? unlike many others ? allows voting by every legal means: lever machines, punch cards, optical scanners, paper ballots and two computer systems.

''Pennsylvania would be a wonderful case study on best practices in voting because we use six different technologies in the state,'' said Nate Persily, an election law specialist at the University of Pennsylvania.

The administration and execution of elections in the United States became an issue in 2000 when ''lost'' votes, confused voters and flawed ballots in Florida marred the presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

A separate study of 37 states' 2004 presidential vote released in February showed the rate of lost votes ped by 42 percent, or 1 million votes, compared with the 2000 election.

Written by researchers from the Massachusetts and California Institutes of Technology, the study attributed the greatest improvements to states that engaged in a statewide election reform program and counties that dumped outmoded voting machines, especially punch cards. Pennsylvania was not in the study.

Persily said that if Pennsylvania could compare counties with different voting systems and ''undervotes'' ? where a voter at the polls does not cast a vote in a race ? officials could make more informed decisions about what voting systems work. Experts say large numbers of undervotes in high-profile races suggest malfunctioning voting machines or confusing ballots.

''If Pennsylvania could develop a complete data set on undervotes ? it would be a real benefit to the nation,'' Persily said.

Department of State spokesman Brian McDonald said the department did not mandate that counties reply to the three-page survey. It asked questions about numbers of votes, absentee ballots, undervotes, voting machine breakdowns, poll workers and the like. He said the department would forward any more data it receives to the Election Assistance Commission.

However, ''the ball's out of our court,'' McDonald said.

'Powers of persuasion'

The commission will hear this month from a consultant who is compiling voting data from all the states, Chairwoman Gracia Hillman said. About five states have not turned in data, she said, and the consultant will lean on them and incomplete filers such as Pennsylvania to finish the job.

The federal Help America Vote Act, which established the commission in 2002, does not give the commission the authority to demand voting information from states, Hillman said.

''Powers of persuasion are about all that we have,'' she said.

Hillman said she hopes states will get used to the agency asking for voting data. The commission, Hillman said, will be collecting data on upcoming federal elections, which will provide ''very valuable'' information for it to ''analyze the state of elections in America.''

The commission won't wait forever for states to turn in complete data, Hillman said. She said the final report will identify states that did not participate fully.

Survey shortcomings

Northampton, Berks and Monroe are among the regional counties not in the report. Northampton Chief Registrar Linda Arcury was at a loss to explain why its data was missing from the report and said she returned the survey to Harrisburg months ago. Nothing was out of the ordinary in the November election, she added, when 133,660 county voters cast ballots.

Monroe and Berks election officials did not answer questions last week about the survey.

When counties responded to the survey, they sometimes gave confused answers.

One question asked for the total number of undervotes in each federal race. Eleven counties properly broke out the number of undervotes in their presidential, senatorial and congressional races. But others lumped all the undervotes together or failed to identify the races for which they found undervotes.

Mixed messages

The survey problem comes as many Pennsylvania counties, which until the signing of the 2002 federal voting law had near-complete control over elections, struggle with conflicting directives from the Election Assistance Commission.

States and counties are awaiting the commission's certification of computerized voting machines to replace lever and punch card systems. The Help America Vote Act requires those systems to be replaced by Jan. 1.

But the commission, which was underfunded and running behind schedule from the start, is not expected to certify any systems until late summer at the earliest, making compliance with the Jan. 1 deadline less likely.

In addition, most county election offices in Pennsylvania continue to wrestle with a computerized database of voters, also mandated by the federal voting law. The state's database has been exceedingly slow and prone to lock-ups, said election workers, who are urging the state to cancel a $20 million contract to build the system.