States, Counties Spar Over Election Rules

By JOHN McCARTHY
Associated Press Writer  April 6, 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio States and counties are quarreling over ballot counting, voting equipment and control of voter information as time runs out for complying with the election-overhaul law enacted after the fiasco in Florida in 2000.

"Right now, we're sitting in the first quarter of the new year and there's not much time when you have a huge initiative," said Michael Vu, director of elections in Cuyahoga County, Ohio's largest with more than 1 million registered voters.

Disputes have erupted in at least four states over the Help America Vote Act, intended to election systems after the punch-card disaster in Florida.

The law requires states to have federally approved voting systems and policies for counting provisional ballots by the first federal election of 2006. States that miss the deadline will have to return any of the unspent federal money they received for the efforts. The rules leave many decisions up to a state's chief elections officer.

In Ohio, some county boards are resisting the secretary of state's order to choose an optical scan voting system instead of a touch-screen system. Three counties have turned to courts, and the cases are pending.

Democrats and Republicans in New York are arguing over who makes the calls in implementing the law. Assemblyman Keith Wright, a Democrat, called the state Board of Elections dysfunctional "the government equivalent of the Addams Family" and thinks the Assembly should make the decisions. Republicans are on the board's side.

Some of the friction may stem from election officials' resistance to being told how to do their jobs, said Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center, whose membership includes more than 1,000 state and local elections officials.

"When somebody comes in from the outside and tells you, `We're going to change all of this and do it our way,' the fear level gets pretty high," Lewis said.

By January, states also must take over supervision of databases of registered voters, angering some local officials who do not want to give up control.

Los Angeles County, which has 4 million registered voters, plans to upgrade its optical scan equipment by adding an audio feature for blind voters and creating an alarm to notify voters who neglect to fill out the entire ballot or vote for more than one candidate. But it is not clear whether the touch-screen systems will receive the necessary certification by January.

"That's how much time we have left and yet there is no certified equipment," said Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder for Los Angeles County.